


Love under Wisteria

by Prixie07



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23749450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prixie07/pseuds/Prixie07
Summary: After being shunned by the English wizarding world for her ONLY part in the war that was suggesting to hand over Potter to Voldemort, Pansy is living her life in France happily. This will change after an event that forces her to move back home and start rebuilding her life and family reputation in England, meet old faces and start some complicated relationships.
Relationships: Daphne Greengrass/George Weasley, Draco Malfoy/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson/Harry Potter
Comments: 40
Kudos: 83





	1. Rude Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Hi,
> 
> Even though I have been reading on archive since a good 5-6 years, I have decided to write my first fanfiction only now. Well, we are all under lockdown so now is the best time, I guess.  
> I hope you love it and I would always appreciate a constructive feedback. This is my first time writing anything apart form school-work, so please bear with me. Why Pansy? Because there isn't really anything about her in the books other than she was a Malfoy Lackey, so I thought I can make her anything I want. I am not french so all the French are Google translated and also the Gordes data is totally dependant on Google.  
> Thank you all for reading and I hope I can keep you entertained.  
> Love,  
> Prixie

__

_"What are you waiting for? Someone grab him!"_ Who could have thought that those words would have more impact than a dark marked arm or literally being in the servitude of the Dark Lord. Even returning with Slughorn and fighting for Hogwarts, which Pansy did, wouldn't save her. Once a part of the Sacred 28, Parkinson name means nothing now. All because of Pansy; atleast that's what her mother said, repeatedly; bemoaning her lack of social invite and unable to go to her favourite shops to shop and places to eat because people would turn her away or in some cases bad-mouth her. It didn't matter that their family had never been part of the Dark Lord circle or even been initiated as Death Eaters; but demanding to hand Potter over to the Dark Lord was a crime with the biggest sin. Pansy’s father had refused to take part in the first war by moving the family to France for the duration and only returned when Potter had vanquished the Dark Lord the first time. Her mother, however was displeased with her father for not being a part of the Dark Lord’s inner circle or even a circle. Oleander Parkinson (Pansy’s father) was adamant to stay at the side during the war and not be either on the light side or the dark. I guess that is the only good thing her father did, not be a Death Eater.

Walking down the limestone path, Pansy spotted her favourite vendor at the market square. The old man smiled when he saw her and bent down to look for something. Tuesdays were Pansy’s favourite, the market was packed to the brim at the market square in Gordes. She loved living here in this quaint village in France on a hilltop surrounded by lavender fields. She discovered this place when she was travelling around Europe after the War.

_After being shunned by the light side for suggesting to hand over Potter and from the dark side for returning to the battle and fighting to save the castle; she was persona non-grata in the English wizarding world._

_She wandered through the Italy countryside and the French for more than a year after the war; and even wandered into the muggle world to see what the fuss was about. Even though the sound and lights of the muggle world were captivating, she came back to the quiet of the wizarding world. One thing she loved of the muggles, the clothing! They were comfortable and not at all stiff like the wizarding robes. Living in Italy and France, she realised the wizarding world there were less formal and have adapted themselves to the muggle clothing styles. To blend in, she shed the wizarding robes and embraced the summer dresses, the comfortable tops and trousers or jeans, evening gowns and even shorts. After a while, that clothing became normal to her and something she became very interested in. At 20, she enrolled herself into the Wizarding Design School in Paris for 3 years for a course of Fashion Designing and Business. Afterwards, she worked with a fashion house “Antoinne” for 3 years. Even though wizarding world in Italy and France had eased clothing norms, there were still very few companies manufacturing the normal clothes. The rich still stuck to traditional robes over comfort._

_Pansy saw this as her opportunity to do something on her own and for herself. She loved fashion and designing for her own company was something she grabbed on. Also, Antoinne is good but Pansy is one of the Sacred 28, if anyone knew how to make these clothes mainstream and acceptable, she was definitely the one of those people; even with the tainted Parkinson name._

_After parting ways with Antoinne, “Wisteria” was born. Her own designing company. She opened Wisteria, keeping in theme with her family obsession with flowers and kept herself in the background and let her designs and clothes do all the work and talking. After only 2 years, her designs were doing great and Wisteria was one of the most sought after collection. Travelling to Gordes for a design inspiration, she fell in love with the quaintness of this wizarding village._

_She bought a house on the hill side and worked around making it a home. She loved the quietness of the land, the hustle and bustle of the market square; especially on a Tuesday when traders came and flaunted their wares during market time. She loved the lavender fields surrounding her home and the terracotta homes and the limestone lanes. She loved it here more than the noisy Paris and the humid Nice and thus had made this her home for the last 3 years._

“Bonjour Monsieur”, Pansy said on reaching the stall. The old man straightened on that and put his hand forward showing a bag full of home-made Calissons d’Aix.

"Tu es arrivé en retard. Heureusement, j’en ai sauvé pour toi tout à l’heure. Tout le stock a été vendu en quelques minutes." (You came late. Good thing, I saved some for you earlier. All the stock was sold-out in few minutes) , the old man said.

Pansy, "Merci Peter !!"

The old man whose name was Peter, "aucun problème. Ici, ma femme a fait quelques madelines et macarons pour la petite Rose." _(No problem. Here, my wife has made some madelines and macarons for little Rose)_ Peter then forwarded his hand again and on it was a box filled to the brim with madelines and chocolate macarons made by his wife which were one of the best things she has ever tasted. Peter bent down before Rose, Pansy’s 2.5 years old daughter who meant everything to her. Rose (keeping in theme with flower traditioned-names) looked at Peter and babbled happily looking at choclate macarons and madelines and reaching for the box.

Pansy intercepted and took the box out of Peter’s hands before they get dropped down by Rose. Feeling elated, she turned to Peter to thank him and to pay him some galleons when he shook his head and only took the money for calissons d’Aix and not for madelines and macarons, saying they were a gift from his wife. Pansy thanked him and then left to do some shopping in the market as she was already delayed and the stalls were looking emptier by the minute and she had quite a few items to still buy.

After some time, Pansy walked the cobbled road to her home watching her daughter running along the path chasing a butterfly. Rose was her greatest gift. Brunette, like her, but with softer features. Her eyes were blue like her father and not like Pansy's brown. Rose's father was a wizard she met in Paris on a work trip. They dated for 7 months before Pansy became pregnant. Not wanting a baby, he left and has stayed away till now. He wanted nothing of the baby so Pansy wanted nothing of the man. She was not really alone though through her pregnancy. She had made great friends, ones who stuck by her and made her laugh and made her realised the actual meaning of friendship. One who she brunches on Sundays with and sometime goes out on Friday nights with, though with Rose in picture, her Friday nights consist of playing with the reading night-time stories, a ritual she never wants to outgrow.

Pansy's friends consisted of Emma, an Irish witch who was bough up in Paris and Josephine or Jojo who is a witch from Sweden. She loved them and valued them. They made her a better person than the one they met 8 years ago, a snobby brat. Apart from Daphne, she never had any girl-friends during her younger years, so she was surprised when they took her under their wings and made her feel part of the group and not just someone they met in the muggle Paris who looked so out of her zone that she had to be a witch. Pansy's biggest fears were them leaving her at the time, even though she wouldn't admit, but the moment she drunkenly told them all about her life and they still stuck by her, she was relieved. Jojo and Emma love Rose and Rose in turn loves her aunties who always bring her gifts.

Pansy opens the door to her home and Rose runs towards a unicorn toy, a gift from her aunties, on which she hops and rides all around the house.

Pansy stares at her, longing for the innocence and carefree nature of her child, and not for her company meeting on Thursday wherein the new collection is to be decided. Pansy looks out the window and see the sun still up at 6pm signalling spring is coming soon and the warmer days await. Pansy craves the warmth now and chill is the only reminder of the cold Parkinson Manor back in England and living with equally cold parents.

Pansy promises that Rose would only know love and not have a childhood which Pansy had; one which was indifferent and never being a boy who could take Parkinson name forward.

Pansy loves her life her and never wants to do anything with the English wizarding world. Her mother doesn’t want anything to do with her or Rose; which she is fine because her mother has said all the untoward things about her and her child when she came to know that Pansy was pregnant out of wed-lock which completely undid her planning of having a betrothal between Pansy and a wizard from a pureblood Russian family. Words were shouted and Pansy did not see her mother again; having last seen or heard from her 2 years back when she was still plotting how she would make a comeback to the high society. Pansy didn’t care enough of that, she had her life in France which she loved and a work which she loved and a daughter who she loved the most.

Her sweet Rose with the face of a cherub and with wavy black hair ran back into the room having left her toy unicorn in the corridor to snuggle next to Pansy, who was working on some budget reviews, to indicate that she was tired. Having had some light dinner already in town, Pansy bathed Rose and then began her night-time ritual of reading a storybook. Rose’s current favourite was “Gnome and Apple orchard” which she loved to hear Pansy read while she looked at the moving pictured of gnomes and orchards.

Finishing the story, Pansy looks on at Rose already asleep. She tucks her in and instructs Millie, her house-elf to look after Rose and leaves the room. She opens a bottle of wine, a luxury she can now have after her breastfeeding days are over and pours a glass and goes over her files again.

After dozing off again and almost spilling the wine on the papers, Pansy thinks its better to go off to sleep. Thinking of the impending Friday night out with her friends one which was in planning for 2 months and a picnic outing on Sunday to a wizarding menagerie with Rose, Pansy goes to sleep peacefully which makes the 3am ward’s owner transfer-ship to her and the manor magic transferring to her for a strong & rude awakening. One where even before her manor house-elf Liff apparates to her home in Gordes in the middle of the night, Pansy knows that her mother has passed away.


	2. Going Back

It rained at her mother’s funeral. Fitting, she thought. Her mother though would have hated it. She would have wanted her funeral to be like her great-great-grandmother’s where every single wizard and witch from prominent families around Europe had come and paid their respects. But her great-great-grandmother was famous, being the first female who was a healer and had invented the bones re-growing potion. Lillian Parkinson was a pioneer and she would be appalled at the way her great grandson and his wife had treated the Parkinson name. Well, even me, Pansy thought; but atleast she was doing something other than trading in the dark objects et al.  
But her mother, Abelia Parkinson would be cursing from the grave at the closed of funeral and reception Pansy had at the manor. She had to struggle to keep a straight face at that thought when the wizarding official was performing the rites to lay her mother at peace.

“Your mother would come back from the dead if she knew you had a closed reception for her” Draco said.  
“I will take that as a compliment.”  
“Where is Rose?”  
“Didn’t get her. No use of involving her here when mother disapproved of her. She is home with Millie.”  
She turned and looked at Draco.   
“Thank you for coming. It means a lot.”  
“Well, no problem. You are family. Mother extends her warm regards and father has told me to convey that now you can raze this shithole down like you always wanted.” Draco rolled his eyes saying that. Leave it to Lucius to remember a tiny detail of a conversation spoken long back.  
“Well Blaise was supposed to be here, but he will meet directly at the funeral reception. He doesn’t like going to funerals. He said to open that vintage 1930’s wine bottle which your parents always told us not to touch”, Draco continued.  
She smiled remembering the times the house-elves would refrain them from opening her parent’s expansive & expensive liquor cabinet.  
“Well, atleast now the house-elves can’t stop us as I am the owner of the manor.”   
“Let’s go inside. Its pouring madly.”  
Pansy agreed. Her mother was laid to rest next to all the Parkinsons before her. She looks at her parent’s graves and with a flick of her wand, adorns their headstones with pansies.  
Draco looks at her bemusedly and offers her his arm and they walk back to the grey manor.

  
Walking up to the manor, she sees Daphne Greengrass standing beside the main door. Watching her childhood friend fidgeting and still being uncomfortable at her home brings a smile on her face.  
"Seriously, now with you being the owner, atleast paint the manor so it doesn't always look so gothic and for once look inviting", Daphne says as she comes over to hug Pansy.  
Pansy laughs aloud and hugs her back.  
"Lets go inside"  
Liff, her head house-elf had cleared a parlour on the West-Wing, her only favourite place in this home, for them to sit. He was putting some food on the table when they entered the room.  
"Liff, please be a dear and get us the 1930's white wine from the liquor cabinet."  
"Oh, we are going straight at the best stuff. Not even gradually working through the cabinet" Daphne exclaims excitedly.  
Liff pops in with the bottle and hands it to her and pops out.   
"Well, here's to you being the mistress of Parkinson manor" Draco toasts.  
"And no more betrothal contracts with wizards over 20 years your age" Daphne chimes in.  
"And even though, I do not have any glass to toast, I will toast to finally being able to taste this wine!" Blaise exclaims from the door.  
Pansy looks at her childhood friends, their happy faces and just for this second she thinks she will pretend that it is not going to go downhill from tomorrow.  
  
After going through the wine bottle and eating the dinner, they sit back when Draco opens the serious topic.  
"What are you going to do now, Pansy? The wards and manor magic now resides within you."  
Daphne grimaces at this and Blaise leans forward.  
"I haven't thought much about it. Looking at the run-down state of the manor and the grounds, I am at a loss at what to do. Plus with father's dabbling into dark arts, I am not sure what I will find if I even start organising it. But the manor magic is strong and I can sense it not wanting me to leave the grounds and settle anywhere else. My only problem is with Rose living here.."  
"You had a bad childhood here because of your parents, Rose won't. You love her." Daphne says.  
"I don't want Rose to be bad-mouthed and talked negatively about when we do enter the English Wizarding World. She is too young now to understand the hate, but she notices all the things and would pick up on the fact that something is wrong which is making me unhappy"  
"Look, I know the manor magic, it is strong, you wont be able to say to no it. If you are worried about the house and the affairs, I can come and help you. We will look into the manor affairs and sort out everything" Draco says.  
"Plus, I think it is high time you branch out Wisteria to England. It is doing good in France, it will no doubt do great here too" Blaise chimes in.  
"Oh yes! When the public comes to know that I am the owner of Wisteria, I am sure they will be happy" Pansy says sarcastically.  
Draco looks away always a bit ashamed when the topic of Pansy's treatment by the public is bought on. His family though fully involved in the war were luckily let off with a fine and house arrest for his father for 3 years. His mother's lie to the Dark Lord regarding Potter and his inability to confirm their identity at their house were their saving grace apart from the fact that they were devoid of their wands the whole time Dark Lord was at home and they didn't fire a single spell towards the light side during the battle.  
Potter and his friend's testimonies kept them out of Azkaban, but he still had to work harder than ever to restore the Malfoy name. Donations to orphanages and hospitals and a considerable donation to rebuild Diagon Alley helped a bit, but also the fact that they haven't done anything suspicious in the last 10 years.  
"Maybe it is time they know you" Draco turns his face around at Blaise's words.  
"They should know how they have treated you unfairly, plus to be honest it has been 10 years since the war was over, if they still give you grief over it, they are hypocrites" Daphne nods at Blaise's words.  
"You cannot stay away from the public eyes forever. Plus, I would give some good galleons to see the reaction on the faces of people at Witch Weekly who would realise that the designer they all been fawning over is Pansy" Daphne laughs.

  
Pansy looks out the window to see the rain has stopped pouring. She knows the ancient magic of the land has her now tied to this land but the thought of returning to her childhood home gives her the creeps. She has hated this place since she was 5 years old and was beaten for crossing into the library unannounced. Her father had beaten her the muggle way and also cursed her. She was 5 yrs old unable to understand what she was being beaten for and why her mother was sitting on the sofa totally unaffected and talking about the party at Notts and the under-cooked lamb she was served there. The thought of ever raising a hand on Rose makes her throw up; so she can't understand how her parents did this to her so frequently and all through her childhood. Hogwarts became an escape and a safe place for her, hence she fought for it at the end; and when Narcissa saw the marks on her hand, she drew up the plan to have Draco betrothed to Pansy so her parents won't beat her. It worked because the beatings stopped. Also, because her father died her 3rd year at the school. Her mother, though never having beaten her, ignored her existence completely forever bemoaning the fact that Pansy was born a girl and not a boy; like somehow it was her fault in this!  
She looks back at her friends who were carrying on with the conversation and laughing about. She missed this. Even with their monthly, bi-monthly visits to her place in France and them playing with Rose, she has missed seeing them on a regular basis. These three were the ones who knew everything about her and have been her refuge since childhood. They were the first floo-call when she found out being pregnant with Rose and were there the day she was born. Maybe it was time to be come back home; with them at her side she can do this, she thinks.

  
Sipping on wine she says, “Maybe Lucius’s idea had merit”.  
“What to raze down the manor! You can’t be serious” Draco replies.  
“Not raze down, but uplift it a bit. Like Daphne said, do a coating of light colour paint so it doesn’t look gothic. I wouldn’t want Rose to live at a place which inspired too many of my nightmares, but I think renovations is in order after we clear out all the dark items father has collected over the years. I wouldn’t want Rose to stumble on them and hurt herself. Should definitely make the place more inviting and cheerful.”  
“Well, I could refer you to this incredible architect who did Astoria’s manor in Cheshire recently. It is very elegant. Let me contact Astoria tomorrow and get the name from her” Daphne says excitedly.  
“And as for the manor affairs Draco and I will sit with you an we will go through everything and sort it out. It can’t be bad. One thing your father was always good at was investments. So I am not afraid of the financials” Blaise says.  
“Well let’s look into the things on next weekend. This weekend, I already planned a picnic with Rose on Sunday and next whole week I would need to look at how to work out my company affairs so they aren’t hampered much with my move back here.”  
“Seems like you are coming back” Daphne jumps and hugs her.  
“Yes, it seems like I am coming back home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oleander, Abelia and Lillian - yes, I am still naming the Parkinson family after flowers. :D  
> Hope, you enjoy this chapter.
> 
> My casting for the characters:  
> Leighton Meester as Pansy Parkinson. I am going to have fun with the Blair Waldorf wardrobe for the fashionable Pansy.
> 
> Oliver Stumvoll as Draco Malfoy. I wanted the softness in his chiselled face for Draco.
> 
> The beautiful Samara Weaving as the supporting Daphne Greengrass.
> 
> Jesse Williams as the handsome African Italian Blaise Zabini.


	3. Cleaning out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay.  
> It seems in this lockdown I am working a lot more than normally so i couldnt get the time to write down. I hope you do like it and please feel free to give back any constructive criticism.
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> I am using the pic of a beautiful gothic winery "Ledson winery & vineyard" as my inspiration for Parkinson manor. The gothic building is beautiful though I would be renovating it in the later chapters.

"DIFFINDO!!"

Pansy and Draco turn around from where they were attempting to open the door to her father’s study to look at Blaise. Blaise looks up at them and smirks.

“Always wanted to tear down that hideous goblin tapestry. Even the goblin wouldn’t miss or want it.”

Pansy rolls her eyes and just goes back to the task of opening the door. She has been attempting to get her father’s study door open since last 2 days. But it just wouldn’t budge. No unlocking spells worked and neither did some lesser dark ones.

“Maybe it needs blood-bind spell” Draco suggests after trying an ancient rune ward on it.

“Definitely not doing that. I don’t doubt the horror that awaits on the other side and they is no way I am blood-binding myself to any of it”, Pansy replies.

Pansy tries to infuse another rune into the ward for it to weaken but still the door doesn’t budge. She slumps disappointedly. Since her mother’s death two weeks ago, Pansy has been a whirlwind of activity. She hasn’t stopped. From having a meeting with her directors about the company’s expansion to England to cleaning the manor to become habitable for her and Rose, she has worked on tirelessly. And it showed. The manor’s West-Wing is completely cleaned and looks ready to move in. But she expected that. West Wing was always the family wing where there were only rooms and private parlours. IT was the East-Wing where she was facing the problem. Mainly her father’s expansive study which was a full two-story room. One which she has yet to find a way to open.

Pansy was tired. She wanted to go home to Rose and Millie and eat food and give Rose a bath and read her stories and play with her, but she couldn’t till they come to a solution for this study room. She had connected her home-floo in Gordes to the manor’s for easy travelling; it took a lot of galleons to get the approval from the transport ministry in both countries but it was worth it. She made it back in time for dinner and Rose’s bath-time and story time everyday and came to the manor every other day.

If only she can figure out how to take down these wards, she can go home peacefully.

“Maybe just seal the West-Wing so Rose can’t access it”, Blaise suggests.

“No, there is no way I am bringing Rose if there is even one dark object in the home. This is ridiculous. Even the manor is not helping me. The thing can give me a headache miles away in Gordes but will not help me getting into this room.”

She huffs remembering waking up with horrible headache that didn’t seem to go away and even started affecting her magical abilities. When she couldn’t perform _lumos_ one evening, Pansy knew she needed to hurry in her arrangements to move back home and take full control of the manor wards. The manor seemed to be silent now and satisfied that the mistress was back.

“I don’t know how we can proceed. We are stuck. We tried the ehwaz rune, the lordship-ladyship spell. Othila, Odhinn, none of the runes are even working with the wards. Short of blood bind, I have no other solution. Father did caution to not use blood-bind if you have no knowledge of what lays inside, so we can sidestep that too” Draco grumbles.

“Of course Lucius couldn’t come and help out. God-forbid the ministry find out he is not as complaint as he makes it out to be.”

“Father wanted to but then thought it was better not to be involved in Oleander Parkinson’s dealings. He says there will be nothing good behind that door. Though he was reading a dark book, which he has manged to hide in a delusioned section of the library about blood-bindings and their effects” Draco smiles.

She couldn’t fault them for anything. Blaise, Draco and sometimes Daphne were all with her in the manor cleaning and helping her decide the remodel and things to throw away. Astoria’s architect had drawn up a fabulous plan for the house remodel and she just couldn’t wait to see it complete.

The last two weeks she has been in so many meetings that she could care less for them. From finance, to new fall collections, to solicitors, to marketing, to directors, to architects, to interior designers, to fashion designers, to her friends; she just wants to stop now. She needs to finalise the new company office and then start relocating some and hiring some people.

Pansy wishes for the Tuesday markets, Friday dinners with friends and Sunday at-home brunches. Why did her mother had to pass away now? Couldn’t she live a full wizard’s age of 150 yrs.

“Look, this door isn’t gong to open with us using non-dark spells and since we don’t want the ministry on our hides for casting a dark spell, just call up the ministry that you need help of a curse-breaker on some unknown dark objects. They would apparate here the second they get the message because we all know they have been waiting to get their hands on Oleander’s dark objects. You wanted to be rid of them, well here is your chance. Let ministry do the work and make it seem like you are gifting them the dark objects in turn for their help. No one needs to know you want to get rid of them. In their books they will owe you. Let them think that” Blaise breaks the silence.

It wasn’t that Pansy did not think to get ministry to do this, it is just that she doesn’t want the ministry people on her land. But even she can’t disagree with Blaise’s idea. She was a persona-non-grata when she had left 10 years back; she doesn’t want the ministry to be on her back for use of dark spells, though not illegal but still very much frowned upon.

She calls for Liff to write down the request for a curse-breaker to the ministry and tells him to send it with the owl while Draco, Blaise and she walk towards the West Wing parlour for a cup of tea.

Whilst drinking tea and eating some biscuits and scones, the talk revolved around guessing who was Draco’s mystery woman.

“I am telling you there is no one. Father wants to retire and I am busy because I am taking over most of his work. That’s why I cancel our Friday plans, Blaise.”

“Sure if you say so.”

Pansy looks at Blaise smirking at his reply knowing he is definitely unconvinced but will drop the topic. For now.

Pansy looks over the remodel plan which the architect had given and starts making her own addition to the model. While she was thinking over whether she should add a pond or a pool to the property, an owl flies in and drops the ministry letter.

“That was impressively fast”, Draco says raising an eyebrow.

He wasn’t wrong in his estimation. It would have normally taken minimum 2-3 days to get a reply from the ministry, the fact that they replied within 3 hours makes her think that Blaise was right. The ministry wants to get their hands on the dark items her father possessed and they were definitely waiting on the invite.

She reads the reply and snorts before passing on the paper to Draco.

“A curse-breaker AND AN AUROR!! That’s a first. Why would the DMLE want to be involved in this affair?” Blaise muses after reading.

“That is suspicious. Oleander’s and Parkinson family name was cleared in both the wars. What is so interesting in this that DMLE needs to be involved?” Draco looks at them questioning.

Pansy doesn’t have an answer to that. The auror ministry would have liked to tied her father for involvement in Dark Lord’s crimes but her father wasn’t naïve or stupid. He never had gotten marked and neither did he even associate or did the Dark Lord’s bidding. He might have shared his views but he was cunning enough to keep his distance from the Dark Lord and maintaining a dumb façade when in his company that the Dark Lord never wanted Oleander in his inner circle or even as a Death Eater.

Pansy looks down at the letter and debates if she has made the right call in involving the ministry now that DMLE wants to be involved too. All she wants is a curse-breaker so that all the dark items be removed, her manor re-modelled and her & Rose can move in so this constant headache finally stops! 

She arrives at her manor early in the morning dressed in her best pureblood dress robes. If she was going to tolerate the DMLE at her home, she wanted them to squirm a little too. Hence, the royal blue dress-robe which even had crystals in it. She was going to enjoy whatever little efforts she can do to make them as uncomfortable as they were going to make her.

Pansy straightened her robes when she felt the wards signalling a presence requiring an entrance.

She walked towards the main gate alone, after declining Draco, Blaise and Daphne’s presence with her today. She didn’t want the ministry thinking that she needs moral support in guise of friends to work with the ministry. She will handle them alone.

Walking to the gate she can see three individuals standing on the other side of it.

Great, she thought. More hands will hopefully mean less time.

She started moving her wand to drop the wards so that the ministry people can enter when she finally took notice of the individuals standing on the other side.

They were three men: the first person was a sandy blonde haired fellow who was tall and curiously looking on at her wards that he didn’t even glance at her, the second individual, a curly black-haired stocky man was already narrowing his eyes at her when she was walking towards them.

But it was the third one who made her stop in the mid of bringing the wards down for a nano-second. Her hesitation would have been unnoticed by most people but not this person who stared back evenly at her and raised his one eyebrow minutely. Pansy just pursed her lips, squared her shoulders and adjusted the wards to give the three entrance and turned around to walk back to the manor and wished more than anything that her mother was alive.

Because walking behind her alongside the blonde and the curly-haired one, was a person who still had unruly black hair and a bloody lightning scar on his head.

BLOODY SAINT POTTER.


	4. Dark Moods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Michel Huisman is my Harry Potter with the untameable hair.

The walk back to the manor was awkward to say the least. There was no love lost between her and Potter and the tension between the two made the other two men quiet. She couldn’t understand what was so important in the manor that the DMLE would send their precious Potter to help with the dark items. The DMLE and the ministry obviously knew about her escapade of suggesting to hand over Potter to the Dark Lord considering it was plastered all over The Prophet vilifying her for her action against their “hero”; which was hilarious since they did more damage to Potter than her during her 5th year. Fickle memories where it concerns themselves, she thinks. Pansy muses that DMLE thinks this is a power play having Potter at her home to help her out. She hopes that atleast one of her father’s dark items curse him. Then this will all be worth it.

She takes a deep breath when they reach her father’s study and turns around to address them looking resolutely away from Potter.

“This is it. This is my father’s study. It is warded and shut with some dark magic. I have tried everything I can safely for it to open, but it hasn’t opened. Obviously. Here, where you all come in. No doubt, there are dark objects behind it so I wouldn’t touch anything when the door opens. Please do not try to take anything before telling me about it.”

The sandy-haired blonde who had introduced himself as Adam, the curse-breaker during the walk here looks and her.

“I am guessing this is an ancient land because the magic here feels very old. The wards surrounding your home are very peculiar. Magic as old as this should have been able to grant you the control of anything on it, am I right? Why aren’t the wards around this office answering to you?”

Of course, he would be able to understand the ancient magic of her land. That’s why he was so interested in the wards. Pansy looks out from the corner of her eyes that Potter had not noticed the ancient magic and was surprised by this revelation and now was looking around trying to find the difference about it.

“You are correct on both counts. The land and its magic do reside inside me after my mother’s passing. But my father’s study has been left untouched for a long time. Since my father warded it with dark magic and as you know, dark magic being left untouched, it strengthens. And this is what has happened here. It has fed into the dark magic residing in the dark objects inside and grown a lot stronger. The magic on these wards do recognise me but since they are dark, I do not have full control on them yet.”

Pansy didn’t want to elaborate on the ancientness of the land and magic, so she just completely side-stepped the question. Which was noticed by all of them.

She saw Rocco, the curly-haired auror glance at the torn goblin tapestry. That he found it hideous was written all over his face. Not much of a poker face, Pansy thinks. If she can concentrate only on these two people, Pansy thinks she can totally convince herself that Potter isn’t really in her house. He yet had to say anything, so it was easy. His judgemental stare, she believes she could have felt all the way in Gordes too.

She looks at Adam who has started waving his wand around making complex rune pattern to get it infused in the wards. She wonders if she should tell him that she has already done this and it didn’t help, but she decides to let him go ahead and decide for himself.

She stands back and lets her mind wander. The aurors till now haven’t said anything, were they here to protect the curse-breaker from her, she questions. Which even to her sounds ridiculous considering she willingly contacted the ministry for help. If not for protecting the curse-breaker, why were they here? What did they think was inside her father’s study that they had to send not one but two aurors. Potter was not a lackey in DMLE, infact she thinks he was pretty high-up. Also the curly-haired one was definitely not a rookie. Two senior aurors who haven’t let their guard down once, she decides to stay here to have a look at what exactly is in her father’s study before they get to have a good look.

After watching Adam put a particularly dark rune on the ward, she looks at the ward which shimmer a bit, she thinks that it couldn’t be that easy. The rune he put was not even a nasty one. The wards shimmer once more and then go back to as if nothing happened. She sees Adam look at them unsurprisingly as if he was expecting that.

She sees him go through more spells and runes and sometimes incorporating them both together. After watching him cast a very clever combination of a very dark rune imbedded with dark spell, she herself thinks this might actually work. She sees the ward lighten and can feel the anticipation from everyone that this might actually work. The wards fizzles once and twice and then strengthen again doubly. Her heart plummets and she definitely heard all three men groan audibly when the wards came back in place again. Leave it to her father to ward his study with the most hideous of dark magic.

“Maybe blood-magic or a blood-bind would work. The wards need to know you have the same blood and you are the current owner of the manor. Are you ok with it? We won’t do a particularly dark one.” Adam turns and says.

At this point she thinks she might actually go ahead with it but she knows her father and she knows there are terrible things behind that door and she definitely wouldn’t want to be bonded to them, no matter how non-dark the magic is. She suggests them to keep that as their last option, which according to her will never happen. She will bloody raid any library for dark spells before she binds herself to it.

She needs more information before she can decide on what to do. There must be some news somewhere of something that has happened that is bothering the DMLE. And there definitely is something in her father’s study that they think is related to the event. Now more than ever she wishes she could have kept her Prophet subscription, which she cancelled once they started vilifying her 10 years back (she wasn’t going to give money to something that made her life miserable), so she can be up to date on events of England and not rely on her friends to give her the news. She decides to rule out giving ministry the dark items in her father’s study unless she has checked out them with Draco and his father.

Looking back at Adam, she sees him waving his wand in a familiar pattern which gives her an idea of incorporating 3 Elder Futhark runes together with the Ownership spell he was currently working on. She waved her wand at the exact time his spell ended to incorporate 3 runes Othila which was the heritage rune, Odhinn which proclaimed her as the leader and Ehwaz which meant partnership.

At her action, all 3 men whipped around to look at her with 3 varying expressions: Adam with understanding, Rocco with suspicion and Potter with his blank face though his eyes betrayed his surprise.

She summarises that Potter didn’t know that she knew runes. Funny, considering Blaise, Draco and she were top in that class; Granger surely would have bemoaned that fact sometime or the other to her friends.

Her thought process was broken when the wards started glowing brightly.

She was not liking this and the fact that Adam started backing up was an indicator of bad news. Potter and Rocco both took their defensive position with wands out.

But it was the manor which made her uneasy. Her hair on the back of the neck tingled and she had a bad feeling that they needed to get out of here.

She tried talking, “Something’s not right. Maybe lets head bac…..”

Right at that moment the wards stopped glowing and threw out a nasty curse.

All 4 of them raised their wands and screamed “PROTEGO MAXIMA!!!”

The spell from the ward shattered against their shields, if there hadn’t been 4 maxima shields erected around them, Pansy thinks the spell would have easily penetrated the shield and hit them. The shattering though was very powerful. All of them flew a good 15-20 feet from that impact and landed hard on the floor.

Potter and Rocco were taking no chances and fired another Protego Maxima.

She attempted to get up from the undignified slump she was in and somehow stood up wobbling. Looking around she saw the air had cleared and she could see the damage the spell had done. Everything that was present between them and the study door was in crumbles. Leave it to her father to put a dark magic defensive spell. The goblin tapestry was in pieces and the painting on the wall was burning and oozing some brown liquid from it. The occupants of the painting seemed to have already run out to another pictures in the hallway.

She was still cataloguing where all it pained on her body with the fall and what all destruction and mayhem surrounded them when Potter rounded on her and spoke to her for the first time.

“THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING? YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN US KILLED WITH THAT STUPID STUNT. IF WE WEREN’T HERE…”

“Exactly if you weren’t here! Tell me Potter, exactly why are you here? I didn’t know that curse breakers need bodyguards nowadays. Is DMLE short of work that they are doling out such work profiles now? What should I expect next? Going for an ice-cream and seeing aurors standing out guarding the entrance? Or is this special treatment for me?”, she hisses back.

She was fuming inside but she called upon her so many year’s worth of pureblood etiquettes to not scream at Potter. She hates it that Potter can still get under her skin. She sees the other two stand back a little from them and tries to control her breathing and remembers that it would not be good to hex Potter in front of witnesses. She sees Potter doing the same, trying to take deep breathes.

“And I wouldn’t try to kill you. It would be too much of a mess later on to handle for such an insignificant thing.” She side-eyes him and continues when she sees Potter opening his mouth to retort.

“Also, you are welcome because those miserable wards are finally down!”

She smirks triumphally when she watches the other three whip their heads around to check out the study door and see that she is indeed correct; the wards are down.


	5. Meeting again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not going for the pureblood supremacy trope of Sacred 28 in this story but more like they work to preserve the magic and are controlling the English wizarding world behind the scenes; more like how we think the Rothschild are.  
> I have this chapter from Harry's POV but going forward I would have both Pansy and Harry's POV in the same chapter. This chapter was strictly Harry's POV because I needed to get his story on par with the timeline. Yaxley is a good guy in this story. And I have also included the Zabini's in the Sacred 28 instead of Burke.
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> Casting:   
> Michael Fassbender is my Yaxley. I wanted an older guy for his role.   
> And people asking about Harry without his specs...it's a magical world, he cured his eyesight. 20/20 vision is one of the requirment for being an auror in my story. :D

Harry Potter was late and hence rushing from the ministry’s atrium to the DMLE offices. He had a meeting with Yaxley, who is the Head of Aurors. After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry was busy attending the trials of death eaters arrested and attending funerals of friends and family. For the first time in his life, he had nothing planned for ahead. He didn’t know what direction to head in. So he took some time off to grieve the death of his friends and also people who were unknown but killed by the dark side.  
He threw himself in trials of the death eaters and providing his testimony wherever required. He shied away from interviews and grew uncomfortable with all the attention he received from everyone. He just wanted to live a normal life now, that was all he asked. The adulation from everyone was overwhelming for him so he immersed himself in renovating Grimmauld Place and staying away from pubic. Kreacher was still alive and happy to serve him as the master and together they cleaned and renovated Grimmauld to his liking and the elf’s low grumblings.

  
DMLE presented him with the opportunity to become an auror and he took it with both hands. Finally, he could sense a direction in his life. After 2 years of training and probation, he became a full-time auror at 21 years of age. DMLE grounded him in life and gave him a sense of purpose. He learnt many things during his training like advanced charms, studying runes and advanced spells.

  
At 26 years of age, he was the youngest person to be the Junior Head of Auror. He worked under Yaxley, a former Death Eater who had been actually working as a double agent of the ministry to the inner circle of Voldemort, a testimony provided by Shacklebolt himself at his trial. Working with Yaxley, he could see the brilliance of the man from his own eyes. The man was smart, cunning and intelligent and a bloody good dueller.

  
He was also from an ancient line of wizards. Sacred 28, is what they called themselves. A line of wizards so ancient that they were believed to be the first wizards on the island. An ancient line which followed its own laws and had its own secrets. 

  
After meeting Yaxley and working under him, Harry realised that he had lot to learn about the wizarding world and their traditions. Like the Sacred 28 have had a Wizengamot seat since the start and though pureblood propaganda is now more or less extinct, the Sacred 28 still hold a place of importance in British wizarding world, apart from the ones who are in Azkaban. Their hold on the wizarding world is not so in the forefront as it used to be before, but he has no doubt that they work in tandem behind the scenes pulling the strings. When he really started looking, he saw that most of the wizarding companies are owned by the members of the ancient families. So as not to get rebuke for the second war, these families started the rebuilding efforts in the wizarding world to gain some brownie points. Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, St. Mungos, the new Financial District in wizarding Oxford, rebuilding and financing small businessmen, etc; they poured money in all to start the economy again. Their efforts were not in vain; people thanked them but also remained a bit wary. Almost 10 years have passed from the final battle and the families have never strayed on the wrong path instead became model citizens and worked towards developing the economy in the wizarding world.

  
Harry pauses in front of Yaxley’s office and thinks over the weirdness that the meeting is taking place in Yaxley’s office instead of Shacklebolt’s.  
He knocks on the door and walks in. He sees Yaxley sitting on his chair and working on some files. The blonde ponytailed man is someone Harry never thought he would admire. Yaxley was an enigma in himself. He single-handedly testified and built trials for all the convicted death eaters and worked relentlessly on making sure that Azkaban was unbreakable now. He worked for the wellbeing of aurors and there was none in the auror department that Harry knew of who didn’t respect him. The man was in mid 50s but could still defeat them all in duelling.

  
Yaxley motioned him to sit opposite him and passed him the Prophet. The Prophet was opened to a news about passing of one Abelia Parkinson. Beneath that news was a report about wild animal attack on muggle population in Serbia.

  
“Greyback?”

  
“We think so. But if its him then he has escalated his attack this time. He had not only attacked those muggles but also killed them. Plus the number of casualties is high which suggest that he has grown his pack. Also one more noteworthy thing in the news of this attack is that with all the hullaboo behind this attack, the news of two wizards disappearing in Romania a day before is eclipsed. Both the wizards who disappeared were invested in Dark Arts and practised it daily. They were also old colleagues of Oleander Parkinson, who was Abelia Parkinson’s husband and your former schoolmate Ms Pansy Parkinson’s father.”

  
Harry looked back at the article stating Abelia’s death and saw a women with sharp features with no laugh lines. Even bejewelled in the pic, she looked grim. He saw little of her in the schoolmate that he remembered. He wondered why Yaxley was so interested in this since the Parkinson’s were found not guilty in both the wars and Yaxley himself had testified that he never saw any dealing between the Voldemort or the Parkinson family in either of the war.

  
“Oleander, though did not show his support to Riddle, he did provide consultation on dark magic and dark items to him. But just enough and not much that Riddle will ask him to join his merry band. Oleander, you see had an affinity to dark arts and was very much an expert on it. He died when he was experimenting on some dark magic with the two wizards who have now disappeared. Even though officially the news was that Oleander passed away due to congenital heart problem, it is known in the inner circle that he was working on something to bring more power to Riddle when he comes back, because if there was one person who believed that Riddle was not dead but simply a fragment of himself was Oleander. Maybe he wanted to show Riddle that he was not being idle just while waiting for him but was working on something for him. Maybe he decided he was not happy sitting on the sidelines anymore, who knows. The knowledge went away when he died. Before the two Romanian wizards: Marius & Pavel disappeared, they had put an illegal trace spells. The Unspeakables are working on trying to find who they were tracing before they disappeared and will get back to us when they have any information regarding the same. 

  
I fear there are 2 groups working together, Greyback’s pack and Rabastan Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, Rookwood, Jugson and Rosier. All of them disappeared after Battle of Hogwarts and all of them are powerful men. I believe they have formed a union in the last two years but are still laying low. What are they after, I have no idea, but Marius and Pavel’s disappearance is not sitting right with me. They are after something and we need to get hands on it before they do, for everyone’s sake.”  
Yaxley told him to get working on the trail of any inconsequential murders or disappearance around eastern Europe in the last two years and start putting a file together. Harry contacted the Serbia. Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and other Eastern European offices for information.

  
While he was waiting on it they got a breakthrough. Pansy Parkinson requested a curse breaker.

  
“No doubt for some cursed dark items.” Rocco grumbled. Rocco was an auror who he worked on some cases. The man was 10 years his senior and was a very prolific dueller and strategist. He was Italian and had transferred here 5 years back after snubbing a desk promotion in the Italian DMLE saying he was born for field-work.

  
“We know they are looking for something that Oleander has, maybe we can start by atleast cataloguing the items in Parkinson’s possession.” Harry responds.

  
Yaxley who was watching them intervened, “From what I remembered of Pansy, the girl was very good at charms and runes. If she is indeed needing help then that means the items are dark in nature and she doesn’t want to use dark magic in case we get notice of it and her return to England be more tedious than it already is. Don’t underestimate her. I have seen her fight Death Eaters during the battle and her wand-work was very impressive. The fact that she managed to fool Riddle with a dumb façade so she wouldn’t get marked would alone be a note-worthy feat.”

  
Harry listens to this and thinks about the Pansy he knew at school. He cannot reconcile it being the same girl with what he knew of her in school and what Yaxley just said. The Pansy he remembered was an obnoxiously mean girl who was always down for throwing some insults at him and his friends and was always around Malfoy like a simpering fool. The memory of her suggesting handing him over to Voldemort was the only memory he had of her of the Battle. But if Yaxley is saying that she fought Death Eaters then that means she came back with Slughorn’s group and fought the dark side.

  
“Two aurors and a curse-breaker? A bit too much, don’t ya think?” Rocco says.

  
Harry agrees with him. 

  
“Like I said, she isn’t dumb. She knows the ministry will come for the dark items in the house, better we get them now and figure out what is it that they want before it is too late.” Yaxley says.

The Parkinson manor is not what he was expecting. While standing outside the wards with Rocco and Adam, their best curse-breaker, Harry notes the manor is dark and uninviting, so unlike the Malfoy Manor. He looks at Adam who is noting the different wards and in some thoughts of his own.

  
“How friendly were you both in school?” Rocco’s question brings him out of his musings.

  
“As friendly as we could throw the other person off the school tower. She suggested handing me over to Voldemort.” Harry shrugs.

  
“Ah, I see.” Rocco says and turns back to watch a figure walking towards them.

  
Harry notices it is Pansy, dressed in dress robes that would be priced higher than a normal wizard’s salary. He sees sunlight bouncing off the dress. He squints at it; is that diamonds on sewn on her robes, he exclaims in his mind. She walks a little closer and he could now properly see her face. Her face has lost that pug-like feature and now has a softer look. Her hair isn’t like the one he remembers in school; its not straight but a bit wavy and with a good volume. He watches her watching them one by one and the moment her eyes meets his, he sees the surprise and the minute hesitation on her part when altering the wards to give them entry. She blanks her face of any expression quite fast and if you weren’t already looking at her, you would have missed the action. She turns back and walks towards the home entrance which they take as an invitation to enter.   
Rocco turns around and gives him a smirk and passes through the wards. The manor grounds seem to be growing wild as if there was no one taking care of it. Come to think he hasn’t seen any elves around too. Her home feels empty and void of things. Maybe she is robbed, he thinks. He has an uneasy feeling of being watched and being judged by the manor, if that is possible. He knows he is not the only one because Rocco’s hand hasn’t left from where his wand is in the sheath and even Adam has straightened his shoulders and looks about the house.

  
They are working on the wards to the door since the last 3 hours and haven’t had a breakthrough yet. Parkinson is standing on the side watching like a hawk. She still hasn’t said anything to him though he sometimes feels her gaze on him. He recalls her hesitation over the blood-binding and her complete side-step to the ancient land and its ancient magic residing in her question. The wards, even he agrees are some of the strongest he has seen. They are all pure dark magic based and none of them have any resemblance to the normal wards he has seen till now. 

  
Its after some time when it is going to be proper lunch-time, he thinks he should call out for a break. He can see all of them are tired when he sees Pansy incorporating some runes into the spell Adam was casting. The runes look complicated and she works on them with ease that he turns around and gives her a look of surprise. He think he remembers Hermione always grumbling about the unfairness that Parkinson, Malfoy and Zabini were top of the class when they had been studying runes since they were young whereas she has only started studying two years back.

  
His thinking is short-lived as a feeling so dreadful crawls on him that he sees Pansy in his peripheral vision taking out her wand and suggesting they head back. He turns back to the door, because if something is making her uneasy then he is not going to show his back to the door and head back. He sees Adam walking back bit by bit when a spell shoots out from the wards.

When he gets thrown back with the others, Harry sees that Rocco and Adam were still holding the shield spell. He casts his own and then stands up looking around. The place is in tatters, his body aches, he is beating himself for not casting a cushioning charm and he cant believe that they came so close to being blasted to bits. He turns and he zones on Parkinson as the target for his ire and they have a shouting match in the hallway.

“Also, you are welcome because those miserable wards are finally down!” Parkinson smirks.

  
On her statement, he turns and watches the door to see that she spoke the truth. The wards around the door are indeed gone but only a naïve person would touch the door and try to enter. No doubt there are more horrors to surpass till they get an entry.

  
What will they find inside? Parkinson asked him a question during her rant about his and Rocco’s presence here and he knows that she would not give them an entry till they give a satisfactory answer.

  
An elf popping into the hallway shakes them all out of the trance.

  
“Mistress, I know you forbade us to come and Liff will beat himself with a poke but there was an explosion and Liff had to come to see if the mistress is okay.” The elf says pulling his ears.

  
“It’s okay Liff, we are all fine. Why don’t you prepare lunch for us in the parlour at West-Wing while get the other elves to clean this mess. Don’t touch around if you feel it is dark, okay.” Parkinson answers gently which surprised Harry.

  
The elf pops out and Parkinson tells them to follow her through the house. The West Wing seems as bare as the other parts of the house. He doesn’t think that she is living here because it definitely doesn’t look habitable or lived in.

  
They walk into a parlour which opens to a garden which is not in a good shape from what he can see from inside. The table is being laden with food and he sees the elves making place on the table for 5 people. His wondering about who might be joining them is answered when the floo flares and out steps Draco Malfoy looking as pureblood git as ever.

  
Malfoy takes them all in and walks towards Parkinson and hugs her. They both go about talking completely ignoring the other three occupants in the room. While Parkinson is telling him about the success of the wards being down, he clears his throat. This action is met by a mirror reaction of both of them turning towards him simultaneously and arching an eyebrow at him unimpressed.

  
“Thank you for the lunch invite, but we better head back to the ministry. We didn’t anticipate that it would take so much of our morning taking the wards down. We will come tomorrow, same time for the door. It should pose much of a problem as the wards did, we think.”

  
When that didn’t get any reaction from either of them, he said their byes and walked out the room with Adam and Rocco behind him.

  
Malfoy’s presence though surprising should not have been unexpected to him. What was indeed unexpected was that Parkinson met them alone. He was sure she would have had someone with her when meeting people from the ministry. What unnerved him was that this version of Parkinson and Malfoy was unknown to him. His path and Malfoy’s crossed rarely after the war only once or twice in the Wizengamot and during their trials a good 8-9 years back. He only knows of him as to what is reported about him in the Prophet or any news outlet. He has worked and taken over the reign at Malfoy Industries and has worked hard to regain people’s trust and has earned back his family’s good name in the Wizarding World. The women he met now as Pansy was world’s different than what he remembered of the school girl. She had a hardened gaze but had laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. She held herself differently like she is now in charge. He knew he needed to get out of the manor because that manor was another thing that put him on edge these last few hours. The grounds are overgrown with weeds, the outer walls are crumbling, the paint on the walls is peeling and the tiles on the roof are loosened, but there is no rejecting the fact that there is strong magic in the land. It is in the manor and in the land and now also in its mistress.

  
As he readies himself to apparate after passing through the wards, he hears Rocco grumbling.

  
“Seriously, you couldn’t have left your school rivalry for an hour till we have eaten that steak, mash potatoes and veggies because that steak looked like it was not anything else than a Wagyu Rib-eye!”


	6. The Study

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the prolonged gap between updates. This COVID lockdown hasn't been good for my mental health plus i was too stressed out because my best friend and her whole family tested positive and she was hospitalized in intensive care because it became severe for her. She is all fine now and back at her home.  
> I hope all of you are doing good and enjoy this chapter.
> 
> Prixie :)
> 
> Casting:  
> Saman Abaszadeh, this prettiest child I have ever seen as Rose  
> Romee Strjid as Jojo  
> Katie McGrath as Emma

Pansy basks in the sunny weather and walks along the cobbled streets of Gordes holding her daughter’s hand. Rose is busy tracking a butterfly flying with her eyes and squealing happily when it nears her. Her heart swells with happiness at her daughter’s actions.

After nearly 3 weeks of cleaning and inventorying the dark objects at her home, Pansy can proudly say that her home is now cleared of dark objects and is safe for habiting. She thinks back to those insane days with her home crawling with ministry workers and shudders.

After Potter and his posse had left the first day, Draco had told her warningly that ministry had not only sent senior people but Potter was the Deputy head in DMLE. That was a news for her. At that time she promised herself that she wouldn’t skip out on the news even if it grates on her that she would be subscribing to the Daily Prophet and basically be contributing to their income. But knowledge is power, atleast to Slytherins and she won’t be caught next time unaware.

The next day Pansy had Draco and Daphne with her when the ministry people came. After basic introductions and niceties, they all moved towards the study. Adam started working on opening the door. After yesterday’s work, everyone was hoping the door would be as hard as the wards. They weren’t wrong, but they weren’t right either. It took Adam an hour and a half to open the today, though he was sweating a bit by the end for holding a powerful spell for a long time while Rocco, Potter, Draco, Daphne and I were firing off defensive spells against the spells and jinxes fired by the door. They weren’t as harmful and when the door opened afterwards there was a clear different in reaction from the 2 groups on it.

While Potter, Rocco and Adam were sighing happily; Draco, Daphne and I were on edge. Because this was too simple. Sure, there was fighting the jinxes and spells fired at you which was exhilarating but those spells were harmless. There were three people here who know her father and all three hadn’t put down their wands. Adam opened the door and put up a shield, not at all underestimating anything, which won him a point in Pansy’s mind.

After checking if anything else is not going to be fired at them, he stepped aside for Pansy to go in. Potter and Rocco casted a strong Protego when they entered. For some silly reason, Mad-eye Moody’s “Constant Vigilance” popped into her mind, not that it was even the Real Moody in her 4th year, but the advice wasn’t incorrect, so Pansy stepped in casting a shield of her own and cleared the air in the room.

She hadn’t been much in her father’s study even while he was alive. That place was one where he punished her, and she liked to get away from the room as fast as possible. But it seemed the same to her now. A desk, a towering 2 story bookshelf, some couches, a liquor cabinet and many trinkets which were dark in nature.

She summoned Liff to call upon her solicitor; if the ministry wanted the objects in this room, she was going have her solicitor make an inventory about it. Draco and Daphne had gone to the bookshelves and started working on creating 2 piles of dark and non-dark books.

She watched as Potter roamed around the room, not touching anything, unfortunately, but was still looking for something. She narrowed her eyes at this. What was Potter looking for? What did he know of something that exists in her father’s study that she was unaware about?

Potter, to her surprise, had not reacted to Draco’s and Daphne’s presence and was silent till now.

Blaise arrived with her solicitor and whistled looking at the liquor cabinet.

“Would you look at that! This must be the best thing we have uncovered in this house, Pansy. I am RSVP’ing ‘Yes’ to all our Sunday brunches. Do you think we will find bottles vintage than that 1930’s wine we had?”

Bless Blaise for his jovial nature for lightening the mood instantly.

“I thought that Goblin tapestry was your favourite thing to uncover in this house, Blaise.” Draco replies from his place at the bookshelf. The comment gets a snort from Rocco.

“I heard that the thing got burnt yesterday. That’s sad. Maybe the DMLE could have kept it for interrogation purposes. No way, any criminal would have not spilled his guts out to you all if he has to look at that tapestry for all his life.” Blaise replies and turns to the two aurors in the room.

“You know too much about criminals and their behaviour. You need to tell us why?” Potter mutters.

“My only crime is being devastatingly good-looking.” Blaise quips back at Potter and saunters over the liquor cabinet and casts a spell to check for any blowbacks.

Potter meanwhile scowls and goes back on his prowling the room. Her solicitor and Adam are working through some objects which decidedly look cursed while Rocco is poking a rabbit statue which Pansy knows for a fact makes the person touching it hop instead of walk for some hours. Her father was weird, don’t ask her why and being her father’s daughter, she is not going to warn these people of it.

She looks over at Draco who is spelling some books and thinks of going over there to help when Potter starts speaking.

“This place is huge..”

“Not everyone lived in a closet, Potter” Pansy interrupts him. Draco snorts while Blaise and Daphne laugh. She cannot help it, its like a reflex to disparage him. Potter glares at her and continues.

“we should section out an area and place strong wards around it so we can start by moving the dark objects there and the wards will help in making sure their magic will not react with each other.” Potter glowers when he finishes.

She hates that his idea is good but she will be dead before she acknowledges the same to him so she waves her wand and clears the area with the sitting arrangement and Adam and Potter cast a strong ward around it.

Blaise makes quick work of the liquor cabinet and tells Liff to store them away after examining them of any dark magic.

Pansy meanwhile works with Draco and Daphne on the books. Some books are very rare and first edition, which she has a mind to keep, while others fall into very dark, gruesome dark, and dark books. After working on it for hours and taking a lunch and tea break, which was the one time she saw Rocco being enthusiastic about something, they still are on the ground level and yet to broach through the bookshelves on the first and second levels.

Draco and her take a decision to keep all books for now and move them to her library under strong protections. They then move on to sorting through the files and objects.

Her solicitor has gotten a team of people who are moving about and keeping an eye on the ministry workers while working. She notices Potter and Rocco looking at some journals and files which were with her solicitors and she still cannot figure out why they were here; but Potter’s general attitude was grating on her.

She was working alongside her solicitors looking through files and piling them in a cabinet to be stored away when Blaise touched the rabbit statue and started hopping which marked the end of the work hour for everyone who stared at him hopping all over the place singing Celestina Warbeck’s _“You stole my Cauldron but You can’t have my Heart”_ at top of his voice.

It took 3 days to clear out the study and draw up a contract of the inventories which was to be given to the Ministry for their help making it clear in it that it is given as gesture of Pansy’s altruism. That got an eye-roll from everyone present there.

The next two weeks had been a full-on renovating of the manor which got completed yesterday. While the manor was renovating, Pansy was busy with her company and packing her life in France. Her friends Jojo and Emma helped her with packing and entertaining when she got in a maudlin state. Rose was happy to be with her aunties who loved spoiling her.

She yet had to find a space for her new company, she had narrowed down to two places. She will work from France till the time the company is set up in England.

She is brought back to present when Rose snatches her hand from her grip and runs to her aunties who are sitting at an outdoor café. Spring was finally here and the flowers surrounding the café blossomed in full. Rose was sitting on Emma’s lap and telling them about the butterflies she saw while coming here.

She is moving to the manor tomorrow. Millie has already sent ahead everything to the manor and Liff and her other house elves have started putting together the place. She had been to the manor yesterday and the architect Daphne had recommended worked miracles.

Gone was the looming, uninviting dark grey manor and in its place was a white limestone manor with blue roof. The gardens and the interiors looked amazing and finally she was ready to call this place a home for her and Rose.

Emma and Jojo had stayed with her for the week. Emma is a baker who works in a bakery in Paris but has plans to open her own bakery in her hometown of Gweedor in Ireland. And Jojo is a potion-mistress who owns an apothecary and works there the whole day. Whenever they all meet, Emma and her’s favourite game is “guess the potion she worked on” by the smells that cling on her clothes still.

She will miss these moments she is positive of it. These girls had taken her under their wing and helped her along when she was alone and the strong and independent woman, she is today is because of them. They have all made plans to have floo-calls and fortnightly dates which she hopes they do because she needs them in her and Rose’s lives.

She looks at Rose who is scrunching her face and concentrating on scooping the food on her spoon and she looks up at her friends who smile at her knowingly and with a promise that they will be there for her anywhere and anytime.

_________________________________

Harry was having a rough few days. After clearing Parkinson’s study, they were all analysing all the dark items they bought back into the Ministry. Impressed as he was with the dark collection, some of it was rare and with gruesome curse littered on it, others were harmless prank types. But none seem to be anything that would have gotten Parkinson Sr. killed or his two colleagues kidnapped worthy.

Yaxley was standing over a basin which was white in colour and had a stone, the size of his palm inside it. He had walked around the room investigating all the objects and has gone to the basin thrice. Not only him, but the Department of Mysteries (DoM) Head, Mrs. Stoneheart was also looking at the basin keenly. In all it inconspicuous look, Harry had no doubt the basin was deadly. He watched Yaxley and Stoneheart talk quietly and then all the objects obtained from the Parkinson manor were sent to the DoM.

Yaxley paced to his office and sat on his chair. On his desk was an Albanian paper opened with the news of robbing at a store page. Looking closely, he saw that the store robbed was one which was dealing in ancient wares.

“The store says ‘ancient wares’ but it is basically an Albanian version of ‘Borgin & Burkes’. The shopkeeper however is adamant that nothing is stolen and everything is accounted for. The alarm was raised to aurors after passer-byes saw the open door and place looking like a tornado hit it. With the owner not cooperating there is nothing else the aurors can do. And that puts us in a dilemma.” Yaxley answers after watching him looking at the headline.

Harry goes through what Yaxley just said. Dolohov was hunting for something. He had read about Dolohov and Yaxley had told him some information too. He remembers Yaxley when he had joined the DMLE academy and how earnest Yaxley was in his search for Antonin Dolohov. Kingsley and Yaxley seemed to put all their efforts in searching Dolohov. Yaxley has often stated that there will always be chaos and a resurgence of Death eater activity if Dolohov is not arrested. Dolohov, from what Harry knows, worked in the Department of Mysteries and was a very skilled duellist and invented spells. Hs mind goes back to his 5th year when Hermione got casted a spell invented by Dolohov. The purple mark left by the spell is still present on her body, but it no longer hurts or does anything.

Harry is more annoyed at the fact that the Parkinson manor didn’t provide any concrete result. The dark objects they confiscated (donated by Parkinson because of altruism, don’t think so) were still being examined and have been put in care in Department of Mysteries. None of the dark objected seized still seem to be the thing they were looking for. For a study which was warded so heavily, the objected inside didn’t seem to guarantee that. And he had seen the same conclusion on Parkinson’s face too after she paced around the room and took stock of all the things.

The study was not just a room, but a 2 floor quarters with the middle open to all the floors. One wall was covered with glass window that went the length of all the floors and looked out to the overgrown weeds that used to at one point be a garden, he thinks. The desk before the window in big and made of cherry wood with knick-knacks still on the desk. There were books, he was sure Hermione would envy Parkinson because he had seen some rare books in this study and some first edition ones too. Books, files, parchments, some weird objects covered the shelves on all the floors. There was an elegant seating arrangement on all floors and a liquor cabinet so big, he thinks it would be a separate room altogether. The air was stale and dusty & the room smelled musty.

He had to give props to Parkinson for having her solicitor there to mitigate and look after all the handover. Plus making it all look like a charity Parkinson has done in favour of the DMLE to give away all the dark objects. Which was weird in itself as to why Parkinson wanted to get rid of all the dark objects. Some objects they uncovered had pretty mean curses if they were to fall in someone’s hands like the worst nightmare inducing handheld mirror or the music box where if opened it feels like the walls are closing in on you; but not anything worth killing for.

Malfoy, Zabini and Greengrass were present almost everyday. If not all three, then atleast one person was present. They worked well together and in sync. From the way they worked it was clear that they knew each other well enough and were comfortable working together. Malfoy and Parkinson worked together most of the times if she wasn’t with her solicitors and Daphne worked on the books while Zabini helped her or did his own thing with clearing out some objects.

Zabini kept the mood light but Rocco and he had noticed that he kept quite an eye on what Adam, Rocco and he were doing. Daphne and he bickered good-naturedly throughout their time with inputs from Malfoy and Parkinson. There were a lot of talks but if anyone looked closely into the talks none of it revealed anything about them.

Harry even after working 5 days with the group haven’t been able to make out where Parkinson had been before returning home, or what does she do for a living. Or when they discussed whether to have the pond or pool in the backyard (they finalised on both) or about some gossip news they heard or some book they were reading. All their talks revolved around mundane things and Rocco mentioned this to him on their third day that they were keeping up the image of being airheads while all of them, according to Rocco’s judgement, were highly intellectual and keeping up a façade for him.

Harry agreed with him. He wouldn’t let say 10-12 years back, but he has seen Malfoy reading and figuring out what the parchments or any files meant before them and removing them and moving the said papers to Pansy’s solicitors. Malfoy was another person who baffled him as much as Parkinson did. He hadn’t seen Malfoy after his trial and then in some news articles; but their paths didn’t cross much in these last 10 years. Malfoy didn’t say anything to him. He didn’t really talk with anyone apart from his friends and the solicitors. It was clear that he and Pansy were close but in the same sense that he and Hermione were close. Like siblings, which was a revelation to himself especially since he remembered how Parkinson used to hang on Malfoy and simper at his words during school days. Maybe Rocco is right, he shouldn’t still see them as they were during their school days, they have all changed since then.

Struggling to open a cabinet which was strongly warded with runes was when he saw Parkinson’s academic prowess and realised that Yaxley was right in his observation of her playing up a role in school to escape the Death Eater initiation. Watching her and Malfoy casting runes and spells on the cabinet to open it was spell-bounding. Standing shoulder to shoulder and casting spells without any verbal communication between them but totally in tandem to each other and successfully opening the cabinet and deflecting the terrible curse it threw back to them before opening was impressive after knowing it took them more than 45 minutes to open the cabinet and they did it without breaking a sweat and casting spells which were all elite and master level academia.

After a harrowing experience of Zabini singing Celestina Warbeck’s _“You charmed the Heart Right out of me”_ on top of his voice after touching that rabbit statue again on the last day of their work and hopping all over the place, he snidely commented that it is a good thing that its their last day and they are leaving because he cannot listen to Zabini singing any more horrible songs. His comments got a response from Parkinson who had been trying hard to avoid any interactions with him than those which were strictly unavoidable. With the way she had been looking through and avoiding him, he thought he might as well be wearing his invisibility cloak.

“Oh, I don’t know if it is that horrible as I am certain we have heard songs more horrible than that”, she side-eyed Malfoy who looked at her amused and as though he knew what she was talking about. When she turned and looked at him, that glint in her eyes made him certain that he was going to regret muttering that comment.

“I know the worst one…let me think about how it went…yes, I remember it now..”

To his horror she cleared her throat, looked at Draco who was holding back his laughter and then turned to him. He felt the horror dawning on him when he recognised the first line of the song when she started singing off-tune and loudly..

**_“His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,_ **

**_His hair is as dark as a blackboard…”_ **

Malfoy was smirking now while Greengrass and Zabini were full-out laughing, Rocco was looking at him mirthfully and Adam was smiling, though he was sure, he didn’t understand the significance of the song. Parkinson, meanwhile continued..

**_“I wish he was mine, he’s really divine”_ **

Zabini, sat down against the wall still laughing and wiping tears from his eyes. Parkinson though was not finished.

**_“THE HERO WHO CONQUERED THE DARK LOOOOORRRDDDDD......”_ **

Yes, he thinks, he should have kept his mouth shut.

______________________________


	7. 20 Reasons

Harry was running so he could avoid being drenched too much from the rain. Since he was in muggle world, there was no way he could cast a spell for it. He saw his destination at the end of the block and made a run for it. It was a Friday evening and he was meeting with Ron and Hermione for Ron’s birthday since it was 1st March. He was half hour late to the dinner, but he thinks Hermione shrewdly informs him an earlier time than the actual time.

He makes it to the door barely avoiding the valet and sheepishly mutters his apology for that. Walking inside, the pub seems rather posh than their normal pubs they frequent to. Since it is rather difficult still going out and not being mobbed by fans, people in wizarding world, Harry and his friends prefer the quiet and the anonymity of the muggle world. They have dinner every Wednesday unless preoccupied where they go and try out different restaurants in the muggle world. Hermione selects most of their eating place, he thinks she probably has a checklist of restaurant names with her. It was Hermione who has selected tonight’s place too, a Friday dinner instead of Wednesday because of it being Ron’s birthday today.

He spots them both after Hermione has already spotted him and has a scowl on her face at his tardiness. He moves towards them and exhales loudly. This, being here with them is his favourite time of the week.

Ron gives him a huge smile, gets up and hugs him.

“Happy Birthday, mate!”

With Ron mummering his thanks and sitting down, Harry hugs Hermione and mutters an apology for his lateness in her ears.

“Honestly Harry, I might just give you one of those smartwatches with the calendar appointments on it for your birthday.”

“I will hold you onto it. Yaxley has one and it looks real good except for that one time he had kept his appointment reminder on talk-mode and in midst of a meeting with the Heads of all Departments, his watch started the alarm of “Take kids to the zoo tomorrow, so don’t bring extra work to home.” It was so hilarious watching him trying to silencio it amidst all the laughter in the room. That’s the only time I have seen him flustered in all these years. Kingsley actually finished the meeting early and let us all go”, Harry recalls laughingly.

While waiting for Ginny, who Hermione points out informed about her delay, they talk about their work. Hermione works as a legal attorney at the Ministry. She is deputy head at the Department of Legal, and if what Harry has heard from the grapevine is true, then she will be the Head of Department of Legal soon.

He looks at his friends still bickering about what to order and smiles at some things never change. After the war, Ron and Hermione travelled to Australia to find her parents. Harry didn’t go with them as he was taking care of Teddy Lupin, his godson, while Andromeda worked and finalised Tonks and Remus’s estates and funerals. Hermione must have placed a rather strong ‘Oblivate’ because after searching for 8 months, they still couldn’t find her parents. Her utter breakdown at this was the most heart-wrenching sight Harry had ever seen in his life till then. Clutching Ron and Harry while sobbing with the Weasley family surrounding and hugging her, there was a promise in the air; a promise that they won’t let the sacrifice of Fred, Remus and Tonk’s be in vain, a promise that they will live their lives to the fullest, a promise that they will be there for each other, a promise that this is family and no one gets left behind, they all shoulder each other. With that promise, Harry who was travelling the world a bit the last 6 months before Hermione’s patronus bought him the news about her parent’s not being found, decided to stop travelling and be there for his family, for that what they were. Mrs. Weasley started the Sunday Lunch where every week, everyone was to be available for Lunch at the Burrow every Sunday unless they can’t make it. And George, who looked every bit broken and lost without his twin looked at Hermione sobbing uncontrollably and announced to everyone that he was opening the WWW, because Fred would have loved some laughter in this world now. And thus started the Sunday lunch sagas, which even after more than 9 years is alive and expanded. The Lovegoods, Andromeda and Teddy and even sometime Neville and his grandmother join in.

Hermione went back to Hogwarts when it reopened and finished her last year and joined the ministry. She blazed through all the bigoted laws and started working on creating equality laws. She even tried her hands at liberating the elves but found the opposition from elves for it. After learning that elves consider working and taking care of a house as a honour, she conceded defeat and instead worked on a law that made punishments and free work to any creature illegal. She created a law that all elves need to paid a wage for their work and at least 1-2 days off. She called it “Dobby’s Act” which got passed unanimously in the Wizengamot. After getting her master’s in law, she started working with the Minister’s office to help in creating better policies for the wizarding world.

Ron, in the meantime when Hermione was in Hogwarts, got scouted by Chudley Cannons when he was playing a pickup game of Quidditch with Harry and other friends. Impressed with his Keeping abililites, they offered him a contract for Keeper position, they had nothing to lose; their current keeper’s contract was up, and they were last in the league. Ron, though was on cloud 9. His favourite team was offering him a contract to play for them, there was no way he was saying no to it. He apologised to Harry for not joining the auror training with him, though; something they both wanted to do together. But school was over and all their path’s differed. With Hermione in school, Ron tackled the Cannon training with a gusto to prove that he would not disappoint them with his signing. Harry, personally thought that there was not much he can do to disappoint the Chudley fans. They were getting a better keeper and more publicity with Ron joining the team. In between all the strict training and the matches, Ron kept up with all his dates with Hermione. Harry could see that they were totally dedicated to each other. With Chudley’s growing popularity and Ron’s impressive keeping, the team for the first time since the last 20 years won the League 1 and got promoted to Championship table. Ron was declared the Best quidditch player in League 1 and was Witch Weekly’s Most Eligible Bachelor for 3 years running. Even with all the adulation, the screaming fans and the female attention, this bachelor only had eyes for one witch, Hermione Granger. Hermione, who hated quidditch came to all his games and sat and cheered for him. And Ron sat and cheered for Hermione, when she won the Best Student in her Master’s and cheered for her whenever her bill got passed. Harry would have been jealous of their relationship, he might be a little, if he wasn’t an eyewitness to all their struggles and complete dedication to each other too. Ron, after playing for the Chudley’s where he had a big role in them winning the Championship and getting promoted to the Premier Leagues to play with all the big teams (where they finished inside the top 10 in his last season with the team; a party for which is still the most insane party Harry had been too and too hungover the next day to remember most of it), he retired from the game. After playing for 8 years with the Chudley Cannons, Ron Weasley retired from Quidditch at the age of 26 years old; because his brother needed him. George fell into a deep depression 2 years back and like the promise they made that day in the Burrow, Ron didn’t think of anything when he decided to quit Quidditch and work with George in WWW. _“Family stand together and lift each other up; plus I was sick of travelling and getting hit by bludgers”,_ Ron said when they all asked.

With his strategic mind, they expanded the WWW and also opened “Weasley’s Chocolate Wonderland (WCW)”, a chocolate factory with a theme park inside just 3 months back. Diversify the portfolio, is what Ron said of his plans for WCW when everyone at home was gob-smacked at the idea. The WCW is a total hit with everyone and not just the kids since it caters to all types of people; _“there’s nobody out there who doesn’t like chocolate or sweets, its just bloody brilliant no one thought of that till now in the wizarding world”_ Ron exclaims when he laid out the plan to everyone on one Sunday lunch get-to-together.

“But ‘Mione, with cheese fondue we can have all sorts of things to dip in and try, plus its cheese, which makes it way better than fish n chips which we can have any other day at any pub. Harry, choose between a cheese fondue platter or Fish n chips? ‘Mione says we won’t eat anything else if we order the platter.” Ron turns to him and includes him in their discussion. Hermione rolls her eyes lovingly at her husband of 3 years, and the love in her eyes is something he hopes he would see in some woman for himself. He is saved from answering by Ginny though.

“Please order that platter. I could eat a whole cow with the no. of laps and plays Gwenog got us to do today. I swear she is trying to kill us for losing against the Falcons last week.” Ginny exclaims and sits beside Harry and gulps down the water placed in front of Hermione.

“Sorry, ‘Mione. I was very thirsty. And why is there water and no drinks on the table yet. I don’t play this weekend so this is one Friday I can drink.”

Ginny goes into a discussion with Ron about Gwenog and Hermione looks around for a waiter for taking their order.

Ginny plays as a chaser for The Holyhead Harpies, an all-women team in the Premier League. She was recruited after completing her last year in Hogwarts and had to work very hard to make it to the 1st team. Ginny and he didn’t date again after the war. They realised that what they felt for each other was familial bond rather than a romantic bond. At one moment in time, Weasley family had two professional quidditch players, playing for different teams and that posed a dilemma on who to support which according to Mrs. Weasley was resolved when she knitted an orange and green scarf, much to the horror of Ginny and Ron. Ginny is the star chaser in her team and also played for England for the World Cup a year back, sadly England lost in the quarterfinals to Germany. Ginny, along with quidditch worked with orphanages in UK. After hearing Harry’s story and seeing Teddy being an orphan, this was a cause close to her heart and she worked on making a child’s life easier in an orphanage. Harry was too proud of the woman she has become. The war changed them all, made them grow up way faster and way earlier than normal.

“Andy (her team manager and coach) wants us to attend this party which is thrown by the Gaelic Royal Society in Galway. The cause is about Lyncanthropy normally that alone would have excited me and I would have said ‘Yes’ to, but guess what is the kicker?” Ginny asks excitedly.

“Uhh..”

“Wait, no I will say because I cannot hold it in any longer. We get to wear clothes by Wisteria!!!!!!!” Ginny dancing a little while exclaiming.

“Wait, they are available in UK? I thought Wisteria sold only in France and its neighbouring countries” Hermione says.

He has never seen Hermione excited about clothes or any designer.

“I think they are trying to expand over in UK and want us to model it for them.”

Hermione on seeing Harry and Ron’s confused and uninterested expressions, “Wisteria is normalising wearing muggle clothes in the wizarding world. France and Italy over the years have converted to wearing muggle suits and gowns and dresses and even jeans because they find it comfortable than robes. Can you imagine it being normal to wear skirts, dresses, trousers in the Ministry? Even after 10 years, we still wear the robes and as much I like professional wear, I like them to be comfortable more. And Wisteria did that in 2 years, made wearing muggle clothes not only normal but preferred in France and Italy.”

Harry nodded though and Ron started talking about a Korean recipe he saw on Youtube (Harry had gifted them an iMAC on their wedding and Ron loved, loved, loved it. What Ron loved more was cooking. With Hermione not that great of a cook at the beginning, and him travelling around the country for quidditch, Ron started cooking after memorising how his mother cooked. He hated eating everyday out when travelling and started cooking for himself and started learning from Molly when at home. _“You can’t eat fish n chips, pizza and fried chicken everyday, Harry; sometimes you want a shepherd pie or just a grilled fish with gravy. It gets lonely on road and cooking helps to take mind off Hermione not being here and training everyday, so cooking at the end of the day feels relaxing. Plus the next time we go camping, I want to be able to eat something edible instead of just barely cooked fish”_ Ron had mentioned when he had cooked his first dish (Lamb pie) and served it to Hermione and Harry. Hermione, who he noted, cried happy tears about the dish and couldn’t stop telling anyone she met even after a month about how Ron cooked her a lamb pie which she thinks is her favourite dish in the world. With cooking duty in the house not solely relying on her, Hermione too started taking an interest in cooking and seeing them cooking side-by-side in the kitchen of their home is the most common sight you will find when visiting.

Molly was happy that atleast one child of her’s was interested in cooking and there was someone she can pass her recipes too.

____________________________________________________

Pansy was happy. Finally, after 2 weeks, she has finalised a plot for her company and even some spaces for her shops. She decided to open at 2 locations, one in the Upper Diagon Alley and one at the new Financial Hub at Oxford Street. The new financial hub had lots of new companies and places opening up, plus it looked promising with open crowds, close to the lake and she even got the company plot near the space she bought for her shop. So it was in all close proximity and convenient. Things were looking up for her till she saw the front page of the Daily Prophet. The headline said **“Parkinson back in England. 20 reasons this affects no one.”**

“I liked reason no. 11: Has no one to hand over to the Dark Lord, because there is no Dark Lord.” Daphne says from the door watching Pansy reading the paper.

Pansy rolls her eyes at that and says, “Really, I think I am partial to Reason no. 6: Easier for you to decide on who to be your baby-sitter as one less person to consider.”

“I am deciding maybe I should have subscribed to Quibbler. There would be less trope in that than the Daily Prophet.”

“Oh, Quibbler is good now. They have think pieces and good news coverage, plus articles from different POVs. Sure, they have their wacky stuff too, but they are there because they need to stay Quibbler. But other than that, many people subscribe to it because it is good after Luna Lovegood took ownership of it from her father 2 years back.” Daphne answers.

“Why didn’t you tell me that before I subscribed to this rubbish?!!”

Daphne just shrugs and watches Rose sleeping on the couch.

“She exerted herself running through the gardens. There were butterflies plus gnomes that she loved chasing. The gnomes, surprisingly were playing with her instead of biting; because that is what they used to do to me when I chased them.”

Daphne laughs at that image. They both had been bitten by the gnomes in the garden when they were young. 

"Maybe they sensed the sourness here and hence used to bite." Daphne teased. After watching pansy's shoulders dropping a little, she continues..

“You have done great, Pans. The house looks beautiful, nothing about this house reminds me about the dreary place it was before. I know it will be filled with happy memories and laughter. It will be different this time, Pans. You need to believe in that”, Daphne says earnestly.

Pansy nods and looks out the window while Daphne goes to attend a floo-call. The manor had been easy to move in. The place was brightened by the natural lights that flowed through the giant windows throughout the house. Her favourite part was the gardens. Rose loved running there and dipping her leg in the pond. The manor itself was welcoming. She can feel the power of the land now that she had permanently shifted here. Her father’s study had been thoroughly cleaned multiple times before they renovated the place for it to be Pansy’s study. She is using the upper 2 floors of the study as her studio for creating her designs and the lower part is for meeting and floo-calls.

Rose has taken to the manor instantly. Pansy had caught her babbling and talking to the different portraits on the walls of the manor, her ancestor, who seem quite taken with her and indulge in her talking. She loves the 7 elves that Pansy has, including Liff and Millie and the elves love their ‘little missus’.

She didn’t realise it before yesterday that the manor protects its own when Rose while riding the unicorn toy fell down the stairs when the stairs turned to slide and protected her by cushioning her fall. With her heart in her mouth and her wand ready to spell, the manor never gave her a chance; it protected Rose on its own. She looked at the walls in wonder and muttered her thanks while running down the stairs to Rose who had no idea what had happened and was riding the unicorn toy still.

“Are you still going to Oxford street? I am currently free and can tag along. Plus, there is a new jewellery store which has opened there, and I need to check it out for buying Astoria a gift for her birthday. Are we taking Rose?” Daphne says walking back into the room.

“No, we are not taking Rose out to the public. Not now, it is too soon for me to see her pictures plastered on papers. I need to finalise the layout design of the store which will be an hour max, that time you can check out the jewellery store. I need to also check on the completion of the company building which should be done by the next week. I can’t keep going back to France everyday for work, it’s getting tiring these last few weeks. Also, I have dinner meeting with Cassius Warrington at this office.”

“Cassius knows you are behind Wisteria?” Daphne questions.

“Yes, he found out in France at a fashion show. He wants ‘Wogue’ to do a piece on Wisteria and highlight the fall collection which will be featured in his May issue.”

Cassius Warrington was the owner of ‘Wogue’, the most important publication in the fashion world. Cassius Warrington was a family friend. Though he had been older than her and on the side pf age you get recruited to being a Death Eater, he had fled from England to France and when the Dark Lord returned. He built his fashion empire magazine ‘Wogue’ in France 12 years ago. And ‘Wogue’ took the world by storm providing its users with latest trends in fashion, technology, food and lifestyle. It has been widely regarded as being an impartial magazine with not playing favourites with anyone. Her path crossed with Cassius when she was working with Antoinne. And later when Wisteria was born, Wogue had done a small half page piece on it. Pansy had been so happy about it and had celebrated with her friends. Cassius now worked out of London, having moved back a year after the war. He contacted her when he heard about her mother and told her to meet with him when she is ready to open her store in UK.

“Cassius is great. He will do a good piece on Wisteria and a good piece by Wogue will definitely cement Wisteria’s reputation in the market of UK. You have already claimed France and Italy, UK is next. I would suggest that you date him, but he is already in a happy relationship with Oliver Wood. I think they are looking to get married because he has contacted my company about the wedding event planning and budget. All those years of attending the society parties really paid off with my skills and work, huh!” Daphne replies.

Daphne who opened her Event company 7 years ago “White Fox Events & Planners”, name based on her patronus of a fox, excelled in her role of event planning and executing it. As she said, all those years of attending societal functions paid off. She was good in her job and was booked for all the major events occurring in the country.

“All those years on opposing team playing quidditch in school must have raised a different type of tension than the one we thought, huh? Good for them, they do look stunning together.” Pansy answers while calling for Millie to look after Rose while she goes out and finishes her work. She hopes to be done by 8pm, she had suggested early dinner to Cassius, so she can be in time for Rose’s night-time bath and story-time.

“While we are talking about events, can we talk about your house-warming party because if you are not throwing one, then I am throwing one for you here, because this house and you both need to be celebrated. This house was not renovated to be kept hidden!”, Daphne throws her hands in the air and walks behind Pansy towards the main door to apparate.

“There goes out reason 18: There is nothing worth celebrating Pansy’s return to the English Wizarding World” Pansy says. She hears Daphne’s answering laugh while she apparates.

____________________________________________________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! for Ron, Hermione and Ginny's appearance finally.  
> I love Ron and Ginny they are probably my fav characters from the books (i completely ignore the movies).  
> A little detail into Daphne in this chapter.  
> Ron+Hermione are my fav ship from the Harry Potter world.  
> Yes I did Wogue with a W.
> 
> Casting for the characters:  
> Ron would be the handsome Gwylim Pugh  
> Hermione is played by Taylor Hill. I chose this pic of Hill because of the voluminous hair. I cannot do Hermione bushy, so might as well let her have voluminous hair.  
> Ginny is played by Abigail Cowen who i think is my fav fancast for Ginny.
> 
> Hope you enjoy reading!
> 
> Prixie :)


	8. Housewarming & carousals

Spring is in full bloom. Her front lawn and her back yard are filled with green trees and different coloured flowers blooming and the air is filled with their scents. Her home is finally complete and for the first time in a long time she is happy to call Parkinson Manor her home. The front lawns are perfectly manicured. Just a driveway till the front door of the house from the front gate of the manor lined by trees on both side of the driveway with small shrubs. Understated elegance, just as the architect said. They managed to get a pond with a small bridge on it. The pond has fishes and some frogs too. Rose loves feeding the fishes and then playing catch with the gnomes. Pansy had a swimming pool a bit further to the side with lounges and a cabana with outdoor bar. The pool was already tested by Pansy when she had Daphne, Astoria, Emma and Jojo over at the manor 2 days back for stay.

She looks on at the garden filled with flowers and shrubs and an orchard of apple trees, lemon trees, orange trees and an avocado tree beyond the garden where people she considers her close friends and family are mingling. She watches Daphne instructing servers about some amuse-bouche and adjusting some flower arrangements. It is great watching her friend be in her element which wanders her mind to her own company.

She had finalised the location for the new company and has also selected the location for the 2 shops; one at Diagon alley and another at the Oxford street which is also where her new company is set up.

She loves her new office. It has a huge studio to work and design and the design floor is better than the one in France. She had started going to work this week onwards and she loves that she is back working and creating designs. Her fall collection is almost done and ready to be showcased.

She thinks back to the idea of Cassius telling her to have the Fall fashion show at her new store in Oxford Street as her opening celebration for the store which will coincide with the Wogue piece releasing on the same date. With the Wogue piece and her store opening, she is also going to give the world the glimpse of who actually is the creator of Wisteria.

This, she is troubled over. For now, the media and the market are celebrating that Wisteria is not only opening stores in England but has also opened a company and the design and creation has now shifted entirely to England from France. She knows when the English wizarding world gets the news that Wisteria is created by her, they will implode and Wisteria will definitely suffer. But the truth will always get out and she wants to get it out on her terms instead of some random gossip or news item. Hence, she agreed to Cassius’s piece in Wogue and has already made plans with Daphne of the fashion show showcasing the Fall Collection at the Oxford Street store. She is confident of Daphne arranging the show by mid- April. She has a month to pull it off; enough time.

She looks at Rose who is sliding down the slide which is gifted by Draco, Daphne and Blaise as house-warming present for them. A magical playhouse which has a sandpit, slide, swings, bouncing house and a small quidditch broom which flies in circle, with high safety involved, Draco promised her. Rose loved it at first sight and is now laughing and pulling Narcissa’s hands to accompany her on the slide.

“For once, this house looks inviting and beautiful and its all you, Pansy. And I would know since I have been here since I was young like Rose and it has always been forbading coming here.”

Pansy smiles at the genuine compliment and maybe more because it is coming from Lucius Malfoy who doesn’t give compliments easily.

“So it is beautiful even without the peacocks?” Pansy smiles back at him watching him looking at Narcissa and Rose who was now on a swing with Narcissa pushing it.

“Leave the peacocks to the best, not everyone can handle them.” Lucius quips back. He takes another glance at Narcissa and Rose and then turns towards her.

“I checked with my sources in the ministry and haven’t found any case in England or the UK that would warranty the aurors at your home. They have said that Yaxley and Potter have been in meetings and Yaxley had been the one to oversee the collection of the objects retrieved from your home. For what purpose, I am not sure, but it has to be big since Potter, the deputy head of aurors and Yaxley, head of DMLE are personally involved. The only issue is the objects taken from your home were not too dark either. And I know for a fact that your father dabbled in dangerous dark items than the one which were retrieved. Did Oleander dispose them or did your mother, we don’t know but I think the DMLE would be disappointed with the objects we uncovered since none look to be the ones they were looking out for. Yaxley keeps his cards close to his chest so there is little we can do now to know what exactly he is looking for and for what. You should just focus on transitioning your life here with Rose and Wisteria.”

She nodded at Lucius while they both went back to watching Rose who was now eating the cake Narcissa was feeding her. The image bought a smile to Pansy’s face. Contrary to what people think, Pansy has always been close to the Malfoy family especially since Narcissa and Lucius had seen the physical abuse marks on her body and had drawn up the betrothal contract to keep her safe from further abuse. Narcissa had taken it up on herself to teach her all the pureblood etiquettes and treated her as her daughter. And hence now Rose calls her “Nanna” and Lucius “Nanno” which had bought a tear in their eyes when they heard her the first time.

Her mind wanders to Yaxley. She had met Yaxley very few times in her life and doesn’t really remembers much of their meetings. She remembers her fighting Dolohov in the battle when Scabior and Rodolphus Lestrange had joined the fight intent on killing the blood-traitors. She remembers her, Daphne and Blaise fighting them together when Yaxley joined them, effectively outing himself as the spy and retaliating their attacks. She remembers Yaxley giving her a look when she took down Rodolphus. That is the only interaction she remembers of him. As grateful she is that he joined them and helped them in their fight against those three, there is a certain unnerved feeling that she does not know what Yaxley knows or wants from her. With Rose being there, she is frightened.

This feeling of helplessness overwhelms her, and she takes a sip of the wine to hide the shaking of her hand and to give herself a second to get in control. She looks out at Astoria sitting by the pool with her husband Richard Fawley and dipping her legs in the water, at Blaise and Daphne playing volleyball in the pool against Emma and Jojo with Astrid Burke refreeing the match, at Draco who is conversing with Theo Nott and Cassius, no doubt about quidditch and business, to Narcissa and Lucius sitting and conversing with the Greengrass seniors, Fawleys and Burkes and she realises that she has people in her life who would stay by her side if and when she needs support. Making up her mind to enjoy her own party, she steps out of the patio and crosses over to the pond where Rose is playing with the gnomes with Astrid’s son Roman and supervised by Henry Burke, Astrid’s husband. This is the beginning of her new phase of life and she intends to live it the fullest.

\-------------

Harry was sitting on the floor with Victoire and Dominique where they both were telling him stories about their visit to their grandparent’s house in France.

It was Sunday and there was the usual lunch crowd at the Burrow. Molly and Ron were in the kitchen where Molly was listening to Ron explaining the layers in the trifle he had cooked. The kitchen was bursting with different dishes, each more aromatic than the other. Hermione was listening to Lucy who was telling her and her mother, Audrey about the snail she had found in the garden, Louis was flying outside on a small quidditch broom with Percy and George running behind him, Charlie was outside showing off a dragon burn to Ginny and Bill while Arthur was tinkering with a Wii remote; where he got that Harry had no idea; but this was the best day of the week when he could unwind at the burrow and eat Molly’s and Ron’s cooking (who makes it a point to bring atleast one dish to the lunch).

With spring in full bloom, the lunch table was set outside in the garden. Ginny was passing the Witch Weekly around where she was captured attending the Gala in Ireland.the wine coloured gown looked beautiful on her and he could see why she was singing praises about Wisteria all week along. The dresses on all the girls looked wonderful. While listening to Ginny regaling the stories of the gala to Molly and Fleur, a comment from George draws his attention to his group.

“Ron & I saw Parkinson at Oxford’s. She was with Greengrass shopping there. Walked straight as if she hadn’t even seen as with her nose in the air. Somethings never change huh.”

“You aren’t wrong. I had to go to her place for word-related thing and she was as obnoxious as ever. The sly comments, the side-eye, eye-rolling when I talk; you would think she would have changed after school, I thought she did on the first day she was quiet and only wanted us to work and talked things work-related, but then the snide comments came out after few days. Plus her home, I don’t even know if she lives there, she sure didn’t when we went because it was all empty and sheet-covered and in shambles, but that manor was haunting and if she grew up there, I can see why she turned out the way she did” Harry inputs.

“I think she is going to claim in the family seat in Wizengamot. There are talks going around about it.” Arthur says.

“Aren’t Parkinson Sacred 28? Wizengamot wouldn’t be a surprise then. All Sacred 28 are part of it, even Malfoys still have a seat and Lucius attends it as the patriarch even after being a death-eater. As far as I remember Parkinson family wasn’t even in death eater circle, I don’t get the hate she gets in the Prophet” Bill chimes in looking bothered.

“The hate she gets is because she suggested handing Harry over to Voldemort before the battle. Obviously, it’s funny that Prophet is after her for this when they spent a good 2-3 years calling Harry ‘Undesirable no.1” and wrote many articles against him right from when he was 14years old.” Ron replies.

“But she fought for Hogwarts in the end, she..” Bill says.

“Wait, she did? I didn’t know that?” Ron interrupts him.

“Yes, I am pretty sure I saw her fighting Dolohov with Greengrass girl. She gave him a scar too on his face with a spell. Definitely remember her hexing the hell out of Rodolphous Lestrange.” Bill continues.

Ron gapes at that and turns to him saying if he knew that which he nods his head on that and says Yaxley mentioned it to him.

Which, he thinks, is overstating. Yaxley had told him that Parkinson had fought for Hogwarts in the battle but didn’t mention her and Daphne Greengrass taking on one of the most feared death-eaters Dolohov and Lestrange Sr. If Parkinson really gave him a scar, he believes it might have turned personal for Dolohov. Dolohov would not let such an insult go. He was after ‘Mione on every occasion their paths crossed because according to him, she had the nerve to fight and live out that dark curse he threw at her at the Ministry. Dolohov is a seasoned fighter, vicious to the core and inventive with his spells, seasoned enough that he took down Remus who was a great dueller too.

Harry looks at Teddy who is sitting with Victoire and turning his hair from blue to pale blond to Weasley red and eliciting a laugh from his best friend. Teddy, who will never know how great his parents were and is going to grow up his whole life without them, partly due to actions of Dolohov. He thinks about Tonks and her clumsiness, of Remus and his excitement of having a child, of the last Christmas they were all together at Grimmauld with Sirius and Remus, he would give anything to go back and relive that memory. The war might be over but the wounds still remain in the survivors, nothing really does go back the same.

\-------------------

Pansy stepped out of the alley she had apparated to with Rose. Stepping out in the muggle London, she looks around for the place she has planned to go. Both are dressed in summer frocks with Rose’s curls bouncing around her face, they blend nicely in the muggle world. Rose is looking fascinated by all the buses and cars driving around and her eyes keep tracking every vehicle that drives past them.

“Bus!!! Mamma, can we go?” Rose squeals seeing the red double-decker. It has been her favourite thing and she always wants to ride in it. the bus driver on noticing her enthusiasm, honks a little bit and smile when Rose jumps up and down at the sound.

She turns around again and does her best ‘sad puppy’ eyes which she knows gets her everything. Sneaky and cunning, definitely a future Slytherin. But Pansy knows the park with the big slides, swings, carousals and those cute tea-cup rides would be more fun for her today, so she bends and sits down to talk to her.

“Rose, how about we go for the bus-ride next Sunday. Today, we can go and play on those big slides and carousals. That would be fun. What do you say?”

Rose thinks a bit and then turns to the bus, takes a long look at it and then turns and tells Pansy, “Mamma, can we also get candy floss?”

Pansy laughs and agrees to her and mentally ticks her assessment of her kid being a future Slytherin, she knows how to drive a hard bargain.

Laughingly, she takes hold of her hand and walks towards the park where on one corner of the park were rides meant for little kids.

Pansy loved the freedom that came when visiting the muggle world. Here, she was a random single woman with a baby and no one even took a second glance at her. She knew coming to England would be a bit tough but she forgot that people still held onto useless grudges and she still was bearing the brunt of it. Though the people were very sly about their rebuff of her than they were before. Earlier, she used to be called names on her face and people would outright demand that she don’t step in their shops or restaurants; now, it is all behind sweet smiles. “ _Oh, you were looking for this earring. Sorry, this was just sold and it is the last piece we have of the design.”; “I am sorry, we do not have foie gras at the moment. We just served our last dish of it.”_ and other such snide instances. Which she can honestly bear but the thought of people saying or acting like this to Rose has made her turn to muggle Britain for outings with Rose. She knows she cannot hide her from the wizarding world forever, especially with the Wogue article coming out and the fashion show at her store opening in Oxford but she can shield her as long as she tries to change the public perception of her so when Rose does go out with her in the wizarding world, she won’t be subjected to vile behaviour.

Rose went straight running to the small carousal rides, already familiar with slides and swings at home which Draco, Daphne and Blaise had gifted. The carousal with its lights fascinated her and she stood looking at the blinking lights and the miniature horses on it passing by.

“Mamma, horsey!” Rose squealed.

She can see Rose was excited about it. She was staring at the ride wide-eyed and when the ride stopped, she looked at her for permission if she can go for the ride. Pansy nodded and watched Rose run and stand in the queue. She walked and stood next to her and watched her ascend the horse’s back. The attendant soothed her fears of falling saying that the rides had belts on them which would lock the child in, so they won’t fall. Fears soothed; Pansy took out her camera and started taking Rose’s photos.

After riding with her on the tea-cup ride and basically running after her from one ride to another, she is exhausted and so is Rose. Buying candy floss and some fish and chips, Pansy walks Rose over to a bench overlooking a duck pond. Rose happily skips over the bench and tries to climb it, still energetic after more than two hours of playing.

“Mamma, can we have duckies at home?” Rose asks eating the candy-floss and looking at the ducks swimming in the pond.

“Ducks need care, Rosie and now we have gnomes to care and then you said you will help in taking care of roses too in the rose garden. We will get ducks after some year when you are old enough to take care of other things, okay?”

“And can we get little horsey too?” Rose replies giving her the puppy eyes.

Pansy laughs, “Not now baby. When you are older, we will adopt some and you can also learn to ride them. They are called ponies, sweetie.”

She corrects gently and replies. Even though she will never be strict with her kid like her parents were with her, she will strive to educate Rose on how to be a strong lady and all the pureblood etiquettes that comes with being from an ancient house. Rose is already speaking properly for her age and also loved outdoors, while Pansy when she was growing up tended to be indoors more and her love for outdoors began only after leaving England. Rose though loves the outdoors. She would play for hours with Millie in the lavender fields in Gordes and chase after the butterflies and rabbits. Now here at the manor, she is always out in the gardens or by the pond playing with Millie, her house-elf nanny, or on the play-set, or looking at the fishes in the pond or playing with the gnomes. The gnomes mystify Pansy as she never remembered them being friendly, but they play hide and seek with Rose and generally greet her with smiles and happiness.

She looks at Rose who is now eating the fries and it seems like the exhaustion is finally setting for her. After completing her meal, she picks up Rose, who looks ready to sleep and starts walking towards the apparition point. As she is turning to go into the alley, she bumps into someone coming out of it.

Jostled a bit, she holds the wall to regain her balance and not to disturb Rose, who has fallen asleep by now. Checking up on Rose and noticing that she is okay and still asleep, she turns to glare at the intruder who hasn’t even apologised for bumping into her.

Turning around she sees Potter standing there looking like an idiot with his hand on his neck and a sheepish expression on his face. All the surrounding noises fade away that instance and the joy she had felt the whole day being with Rose and playing with her and watching her have fun dissipates the instance Potter opens his mouth.

“Parkinson, sorry. I didn’t see you. Wait..you are in the muggle world. Wait..is that a baby with you?” Potter goes from saying his weak apology to stuttering by the end. Even though she finds this endearing that being a deputy head of DMLE, he can still fumble and stutter when talking, she is too annoyed to show it.

“10 points to Gryffindor for this fantastic observation, Potter. Apology accepted.”, she replies and apparates with Rose on the spot, who hasn’t even moved during the whole fiasco.

Potter shaking his head and smiling is the last thing she notices while apparating.

\---------------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay.  
> I am trying to keep up with updating but it is a challenge. I will try my best to keep a regular updating schedule for this story because I do not want to abandon it.  
> Hope you enjoy this chapter.
> 
> \-- prixie
> 
> P.s: I normally don't log into AOO from laptop and usually do all the work and posting from phone, so please help me out. I did the posting from phone today with the picset and everything and just checked from my laptop and no picset is available or seen in any chapters. I can see them reading the story via phone but not on laptop. Are you all facing this issue? Because I have posted picset in all the chapter at the start of it, please do reply.  
> Thanks!


	9. Cafes and their interesting Lunches

_Clack..Clack..Clack_ of her heels echoed in the room as Pansy struts along the design room checking the finishing touches on the Fall Collection of her designs. Her personal assistant. Colleen, a 42 yrs old French witch who was with her from the start of Wisteria walks behind her noting down all the inputs Pansy gives in her notepad.

Her office had the opening a week and a half back and they were already in full-swing working on the showcasing of Fall Collection. The runway show was going to be held at the 2 empty plots beside her new store in Oxford which Daphne and her company are overseeing to turn it into a forest in fall setting for the show where afterwards the attendees can walk the attached pathways to her store and shop the collection there or simply buy other products from her designs.

Pansy was proud of the store; it was huge and has a very clean design. With her company and warehouse just 2 blocks away, she could pop-in anytime and check the sales and can have customer feedback too. The oxford street was booming in business because there were so many varied things spread across the street that the street was busy all the time. From new restaurants, cafes, to ballet studio, to financial district set up one block away, to arcade near the lake, to even the Weasley’s joke shop, to the vintage shops, to home décor shops, to tea-shops, to apothecary, to the lake itself where people walked, jogged, ate, rowed boats, she was happy with her choice of setting up the store and her company. There was so much to do here and it was not a narrow street like Diagon but a wide brightly lit-up alley where even though it is always bustling, you will never bump into someone while walking, there was enough elbow room, as they say.

Pansy has already invested in a soup kitchen, which will provide free meals to people in need and has also started working on starting a pre-school for wizarding kids for children aged 5-10 where a child can have basic learning and parents can have a breather. It is not going to be an exclusive school but will be inclusive for all wizarding families, the last thing she needs is having an exclusive school only for the rich and be accused for peddling the pureblood propaganda.

These two are the social issues closest to her heart right now. She is just working on the proposal for the school while the Soup kitchen is already set up and ready to go. She is thinking of partnering with orphanages or old-age homes and mental institution where she can provide the healthy meals. The proposal for the school will take a long time. She needs to do a thorough research and would need to put it forward to the Wizengamot for approval. Which reminds her that she needs to start attending the Wizengamot too. She is going to do everything to make sure the blight on Parkinson name is removed and the Parkinson name goes back to being one of the important families in wizarding world when her great-grandparents were around. She wants to make the Parkinson name good again so Rose can grow up feeling proud to be one.

She was surprised to see a Quibbler article today on her and her return to England. That article was the only one which conveyed condolences to her on passing of her mother and mentioned her great-great grandmother Lillian and her works and also her great-grandparents; William & Amelia Parkinson who were philanthropists of many social work charities and had founded Parkinson Foundation, a charitable trust which was involved in investing in R&D of potioneering and also offered scholarships to children (she has already made up her mind to restart the foundation). The article went on to hypothesize what Pansy would do and how she wasn’t involved with Voldemort and Death Eater activities, even at school and Lovegood, who was the author of the story, actually stated that Pansy fought the death-eaters in Battle of Hogwarts fully knowing that people behind the masks were acquaintances who she would have known her whole life. She didn’t know why Lovegood thought to portray her as such, but she wasn’t complaining. If it will help people to keep aside their prejudice and give her a chance to prove she was not her parents, then she would gladly take any article written on her. She had sent a flower arrangement to Lovegood for the article with a _Thank You Note_ this morning.

She has been making the final touches on the showstopping dress of the show for some hours when Daphne pops into her studio asking if she wants to go out for lunch.

“The dress looks fantastic, Pans. I am so looking forward to the show. The woods theme is going to blow everyone’s mind. Plus, we are thinking of convincing some faeries if they will work for us on the show and provide us with their twinkling lights and pixie dust so it will make it more magical. Your team is currently finalising the menu for catering. Can I say that this will be one of the most fabulous fashion show done around the world.”

Daphne chatters on while Pansy lowers the dress from where it was floating in the air and spells it so it is vacuum sealed and she puts away her needles. Even though she can magic the needles to sew, she actually likes it sewing the intricate designs by her own hand. There is a satisfaction to see the end result and it also calms her mind doing the activity herself.

Putting away all the things, she walks arm in arm with Daphne to the café by the lake which has become her favourite because not only is the food amazing but you can have privacy there and people don’t bother each other inside the café.

“I think Lovegood’s article would be a start to changing the mindset of people about you. This is good, Pans; Quibbler is now known for sensible articles and Lovegood herself is known as a war-heroine and is she is putting out articles about the good work Parkinson family has done throughout generations, excluding your dear parents, it is a good reminder to everyone in society that everyone makes their own path and we shouldn’t judge quickly.”

Pansy gives her an impressed look, “What’s with the philosophy lately?”

Daphne groans and answers, “Ahhh, I love Cassius, really I do, but he is being a pain in the ass with the whole wedding planning. The wedding is this weekend and he has gone ahead and changed the whole menu and wants a change in the set-up. I am so close to hexing him and I swear I considered hexing him last time when Oliver stopped me and worked his magic with his work to put a stop on all the changes. Hence, I am at your workplace hiding out and checking on your event planning, thinking if I am out of his sight, he might not think about more changes. He wants the wedding to be the grandest affair, which it IS going to be because, Pans, it is going to be beautiful and romantic and we are going to cry our eyes out, so spell your makeup to be waterproof, giving you a heads up; but he is being an annoying twat changing his mind twice or thrice a day. Bless Oliver as he handles him beautifully and puts a stop to the madness. But the guestlist is impressive, I mean with fashion editor and a quidditch player, it was going to be huge, but this is massive. We have American socialites, European royalties, fashion houses, quidditch players, and also some celebrities. So it is already a headache designing the whole event but with Cassius and his forever changing mind, he is one change in decision away from me hexing him with _Anteoculatia_ which I remember him fearing that hex when Henry had hexed him when we were in school and he sprouted antlers which wouldn’t go for 2 days.”

Daphne and her laugh remembering the memory being 1st years at Hogwarts with Warrington being hexed by Burke as a prank. Still laughing, she opens the door of the café and walks in. The aroma of freshly baked scones hit her, and she realises that she hadn’t actually eaten anything since breakfast.

Settling into their table, they notice that they are sitting near Weasley brothers who are ordering now.

“If it wasn’t for Oliver Wood, I would have gone mad. All these philosophical talks are a result of me talking with Oliver. The guy should be a coach after he retires, he can inspire his team to win with his speeches.”

Pansy looks at her amused and let her rant and is thus surprised when she hears someone join in the conversation from the neighbouring table.

“Is that our esteemed captain Wood you are talking about? The guy who use to say to us ‘ _I don’t care if you hit your head, you need to play on.’_ That Wood. You need him to say inspirational talks to team members.”

Pansy and Daphne both whip their heads to the side to see who talked. It was one of the Weasley men. The one who was a twin, the prankster; though she remembers his twin dying in the battle and the usually fun natured twin had turned full of sorrow.

“You remember how he tried to drown himself in the bathroom because we lost an important match.” Ron Weasley, who she now recognises as the other Weasley now intervenes. She remembers him playing quidditch for Cannons and actually being their best player and best keeper in the league that time. He raises a butterbeer glass at her and acknowledges her presence, which surprises her for a second and then she smiles back. Guess, everyone really did grew up.

“Or the time he told me _‘Harry, I don’t care if you fall and get hurt but you need to catch the snitch’_ We are talking about Oliver, right?”

And Potter, of course, joins in. Out of his ministry robes, she notices him wearing a shirt and casual trousers with sunglasses in hand. He hugs George and hugs Ron and sit in between them on the round table. He looks like someone who takes care of his appearance but doesn’t want it to be seem, Shabby-chic.

“One time he got into an argument with McGonagall that he was okay with me being hexed or cursed by the broom but he wanted that firebolt in the match. He had his priorities a bit out of order, but eh, we love him for the same. Why are we talking about Oliver, though?” Potter says looking at Weasleys and then doing an awkward wave at her and Daphne to greet them.

“Greengrass here was mentioning that he could be a great motivational and should give team talks for matches.” George replies to Harry giving him a crazy look. The men all look at each other for a second and then simultaneously burst out laughing.

Daphne, who looks put out a bit, goes on, “Maybe you don’t know him now, but he has kept me sane with his talks during his wedding planning. You should give him some credit for growing up and prioritising more than just quidditch.” Daphne goes back to her menu, while Pansy just smirks.

“We meet him every month for a game of pick-up quidditch and some drinks. The last time he went after Ginny for not passing the ball properly. It was glorious watching them both go at each other. The man is still bonkers about quidditch, but I agree with Greengrass, its is way less hyper now. You do event-planning?” George asks her.

Pansy who has given her order is now looking at Daphne and George converse about event planning and Weasley is now telling her about the joke shop and the chocolate factory. She didn’t knew they had a chocolate factory and with the details he is divulging about it, she thinks it is something Rose would love to visit.

“I am sorry about other day. For bumping into you in the muggle world.” Potter says.

“It was no harm Potter. I did accept your apology that day.”

“Hold on a sec, you were in the muggle world?” Ron Weasley interjects.

“I like the calm of muggle world” she answers.

“Calm??” Ron looks dubious at that. Potter too is raising his eyebrow and looking at her unbelievingly.

“Okay, not calm, but the anonymity. I can roam around there without anyone knowing who I am or being photographed.”

Ron nods in understanding and says “Yeah, I understand. Most of the time we eat at muggle restaurants because we can be at peace there and not being bothered by people gawking at us. Strange, how a world which is noisy and bright can bring peace to some.”

Potter nods too and she is grateful that he doesn’t bring up Rose but she can see the question in his eyes. She pretends to not notice it and makes herself busy eating her grilled chicken.

She hears tidbits of conversation going around. Daphne is still talking to George and the conversation has now moved on to different weird flavours of chocolates they have tasted while Potter and Ron had moved on to discussing quidditch match between Tornadoes and Falcons. Typical. She wonders how this afternoon turned so unpredictable. One moment she was working on a dress and the next she is in a café having a decent conversation with Weasleys and Potter. Hearing her name in a conversation, she turns and focuses on Daphne and George.

“….Pansy is utter rubbish at trying new things to eat. We had visited a chocolate fair in Switzerland 5 months back and Pansy didn’t taste anything new. All she picked was milk chocolate, caramel chocolates and some nutty chocolate. She was a spoilsport the whole evening and I was looking forward to taste all the weird combinations. They had Ginger chocolate, Indian curry chocolate, sweet potato chocolate, which okay was horrid, but the bacon one was sooo good.”

“Hey!! I had the bacon one and had also bought it. Plus, it is gross to spit out something you don’t like in front or some steps ahead of the sellers and waste it.” Pansy mumbles.

“You need to visit our chocolate factory. It is going to blow your minds off. It is a theme park inside with chocolate making demonstration too” George says enthusiastically. He goes off listing all the cool rides and chocolates demo and the chocolate land and chocolate waterfall that even she is curious of it. Daphne looks sold on the idea of visiting.

“It is great way to spend a day for kids too, they would definitely have fun playing and just looking at the chocolates.” Potter tells with a blank face.

Daphne stares at him and tilts her head at him. Potter, though is still looking at her and eating the lamb off his plate.

“Thanks, we will inform our friends and acquaintances of it. We will surely visit once the work slows down a bit.” Daphne answers George and ignores Potter.

Pansy, though can see Potter rummages around in his own mind about the girl he saw her with. Looks like you cannot stop being an auror even on an off-day.

\---------

Harry had just come home last night after solving a case in Ireland and is on leave today. He has plans to meet with Ron and George in a café at Oxfords for lunch.

Walking inside he had seen George and Ron talking with women sitting on the table next to them. Coming closer, he was surprised to hear them saying dialogues which were obviously Oliver’s from back in the day pep-talks of his in school but what was more shocking was they were talking to Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass. Observing them unnoticed still, he sees she is wearing trousers and a top and has her hair half down while Greengrass is at her casual best with a striped t-shirt. He shakes his head and joins them with a Oliver Wood quote.

Harry doesn’t know why he mentioned kids, but he can see that Parkinson and Greengrass have both closed off subtly, very subtly. Greengrass is still engaging George in his conversation about weird flavours in chocolate, but the openness is gone now, and Parkinson is talking with Ron about why Falcons are better than Cannons.

It is a bit weird watching 5 unlikely people conversing and having lunch together. He thinks about the kid he had seen with Parkinson in muggle London and on observing his surrounding, he noticed a park with carousal rides and some play sets. He can understand why Parkinson wants to go to muggle world to unwind. He, himself goes there all the time. But the kid threw him off. He knows the kid is Parkinson’s from the way she had gently checked up on her before turning on him in the alley. He hadn’t known it was her till she turned around. He was expecting an angry hex when he realised it was her, and thus was surprised when she made a smart quip and apparated. Seems, all she has done is surprised him whenever their paths crossed except when she sang that wretched song.

He tunes into a discussion where all 4 of them now are discussing the Italy vs Germany quidditch match of last year. Parkinson, Greengrass, Malfoy and Zabini had apparently attended that.

George light-heartedly says, “Oh! To be rich and able to attend any event you can.”

“Look who is talking! Aren’t you bringing in loads of galleons with the joke shop and now the Chocolate factory.” Greengrass quips back.

“And not have a worry about doing work. Just roll in the galleons and shop, travel and attend events.” Harry says, needing to know Parkinson’s reaction because the jab was obviously meant for her and everyone at the table recognised that.

Parkinson just gave him an unimpressed look and stated, “Why work, when you have money to live yours and your next 5 generations luxuriously. Why work your ass off for upgrading to a house from a under-stair closet, when you can travel to places you have dreamt of. Also, shopping is work or maybe you haven’t shopped correctly. I mean the upgrading to clothes that actually fit, keeping aside the fact that they are obviously shopped from Tesco might make some happy, but I strive for greater things. Obviously.” Parkinson replies with a wink to soften the personal blows she delivered in the statement. George coughs back a laugh while Ron goes and takes a sip of the butterbeer smirking.

“Perhaps, I am doing shopping “incorrectly”. Clothes that fit and are nice are the only thing on my mind while shopping. Maybe I don’t spend hours shopping, preferring to rather finish it in 5-10 mins, but hey it does the job same as a high-end brand would.”

“Potter, shopping is a conscious activity. I am not saying go for high-end stuff, but people should always be aware if their clothes are made ethically or no. If the touch of fabric is soft, smooth and organic. If the clothing is recyclable at the end of its use. There is much to shopping than just fit and nice to look at.” He, frankly, has nothing to say on this. He has never given a thought that shopping can be so much more than just what he normally does. Also, hearing about ethical, organic and recycling and shopping’s environmental effect from Parkinson’s mouth is surprising. He never knew about such stuff. Leave it to Parkinson to surprise him once again, on something as small as shopping.

Parkinson continues giving Greengrass a pointed look, “Speaking of shopping, we need to continue with our shopping and leave, we have been here almost an hour.”

They both stand up gracefully and Greengrass addresses them, “It was a pleasure having lunch with you all. Wish you the very best of day.”

Parkinson, meanwhile turns and says, “Well, this was an interesting lunch. I don’t think Trelawney’s tea leaves would have predicted this day. Good day. Potter, always a pleasure meeting you, I strive to keep you humbled and not let that Chosen One tripe get to your head much.” And she walks away.

George surmises all his feelings, “Well, that was as interesting as it was the weirdest thing to have happened to me, and I get into a lot of weird shits!”

“What is weirder, that we had lunch with them, a civil and a bit of laughter-filled lunch; or that Parkinson knows what a Tesco is and correctly guessed that’s where you do all your shopping from!?!” Ron shakes his head and turns to him.

He laughs at that and starts a conversation about Trelawney and her different predictions about him during his school years. He will think about Parkinson later, when he is alone, and how she has managed to be in his thoughts and him dissecting every conversation they had in his mind, after every meeting. That would be later, now he intends to catch up with his friends.

\-----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have some more interaction between Harry and Pansy. Plus a very matured Ron.  
> And also the first time George and Daphne meet in the story.
> 
> My fancast for George is the handsome Alex Mckensie
> 
> Hope you enjoy reading!
> 
> \-- Prixie


	10. Wogue

Pansy was having breakfast with Rose before she leaves for work when a huge owl flew in with a parcel. The owl dropped the parcel in front of her and waited for treats before turning to Rose who was giggling at it and trying to pet it. Pansy, for one horrific moment thought the owl would bite Rose, but it just purred under Rose’s affection. Pansy opened the parcel and saw that it has the new Wogue magazine, the one with her cover.

The owl, which is majestic and gold in colour eats the treats and purrs some more, hoots and flies away. Leave it to Cassius to have such a gauche owl.

“Mamma, its you!” She sees Rose grab the magazine and look at Pansy picture. She has 2 Wogue cover. Even she can admit that the cover has come out beautifully, on the front page of both magazines. One has her in an ethereal gown, her design, with her hair flowing on one side softly and another has her in black leather trousers, again her design, with her hair slicked back. She loves this cover a bit more than the white because here she looks more confident. Liff pops in that moment with a flower arrangement taller than him.

He informs her that its from Lord Cassius and pops out. The flower arrangement is other-worldly. Beautiful, won’t do it justice. The arrangement has lilies and peonies, her favourites, in all colours imaginable with gold roses forming the centre. It has pixie dusts sprinkled on it and has butterflies magicked to fly around it. Its huge, it is extravagant and it is so Cassius and she loves it.

Rose is staring wide-eyed at it and looking at all the butterflies and catching the pixie dusts. She thinks that there is no going back. Now, it is known to everyone that she is the one behind Wisteria and she is a bit apprehensive about the backlash. She and her team and her publicists had a long meeting yesterday about potential backlash and how to deal with it. She looks at the slicked-back hair cover of hers and takes a breath. She is ready, yes she is.

She calls Rose back to the table so they can finish the breakfast and go on with the rest of the day. Which is futile, because the moment they sit to eat, Liff in with Millie and both of their hands are full of congratulatory flowers, gifts, toys for Rose from her friends and there is a barrage of owls from Witch Weekly, Cosmos, Tatler and well, well even Prophet for interview. Forwarding the owls and their messages to her publicist, she changes her wards for owl restriction. Rose, meanwhile is happily eating eggs and playing with the small dragon soft toy, definitely from Draco. She needs to have with her friends about not gifting Rose something every time and spoiling her. Thinking of the long day ahead, she starts eating her breakfast.

After an eventful morning full of owls, gifts, interview requests, messages from old colleagues and "friends" who had abandoned her and some howlers too, she got around to work at noon. She had a busy schedule with the fittings on models for the fashion show to finalising the accessories and look of the models. 

She is now in midst of completing Daphne and her's dress for Cassius-Oliver wedding. She is still hesitant to get Rose to the wedding, she was one detail which was not divulged in the Wogue article. She is still unsure how to introduce Rose into the wizarding world. She knows it needs to be done before someone else lets it out. Shaking her thoughts, she focuses on the dress and goes to work on it.

As she is done finishing it, she steps back a few steps and takes a good look at it. While looking at it, an owl swoops in and drops a shiny colourful note on top of her table. She picks up the note and it transforms into a bouquet of wildflowers with a note still sticking to it.

Marveling at the intricate spellwork, she picks up the note,

_"Pansy Parkinson, congrats to the beautiful cover._

_I read the interview and would love to have a sit-down with you on the social issues and responsibilities we can highlight and have people involved in._

_Looking forward to meeting you._

_-Luna Lovegood"_

Pansy smiles and keeps the note; she has found a way to introduce Rose to the Wizarding Society.

\----------

Harry is at work when he hears Parkinson’s name mentioned in excited whispers. He looks around to see his female colleagues gathered in a circle reading something. Thinking it must be another Prophet article about her, he continues walking till he reaches his office. It is Wednesday and he wants to finish some reports early so he can go and meet Ron & Hermione for their weekly dinner and drinks.

Throughout the day, he keeps hearing Parkinson’s name in whispers and it is only when he is leaving the ministry does his gaze fall onto her face, on a magazine. Stunned, he stops and picks up the magazine from the vendor and there she is on the front cover. Dressed in a revealing white gown which is open from the mid, he admits that she looks stunning, but what catches his eye more are the words _“Designer & Founder of Wisteria”_. Considering that just two days back he accused her of not working and just shopping and living off of her family’s wealth, he would say he is a bit embarrassed about that episode now. Buying that magazine on an impulse and the other one where she looks completely different than the first magazine, with slicked-back hair and leather high-waisted trousers, he leaves the ministry to meet Ron & Hermione, in what he thinks will definitely be interesting dinner.

_How did Wisteria come into existence?_

_It was not really a conscious thing for me first. After travelling, I found that I really liked designing and the comfort of muggle clothing drew me to it. After researching quite a bit, I enrolled into a fashion design school in France and started studying design and business. Interning at a finance company on the side, the school days were exhausting, they were days of long hours of school and then work, sleepless nights; but it was well worth it. It prepared me for the future when I would open Wisteria and would go through long hours and sleepless nights all over again. Wouldn’t change it for anything. After finishing fashion school at top of my year, I worked at Antoinne. The culture and professionalism at Antoinne helped shape my designing career and made me more confident in my work. Working and learning at Antoinne were the most satisfying years of my life. I had great colleagues and great mentors. Therefore, parting ways with them was one of the toughest things I had to do, but I was yearning for my own designs and company. I knew I was ready for it and I had great support from people close to me. Wisteria was born a little over 2 years back and it was built up with tears, sweat, undying dedication and effort from my team and a dream, a dream that I can pave my own path. It was borne of love and hard-work of so many people; I will forever be grateful of them._

Harry takes a sip of the bourbon, while Hermione finishes reading. “I cannot believe you told her on her face that she is a spoiled kid living off her parent’s wealth, when she worked and built something from the ground up. Without her family’s influence” Ron laughingly says remembering the lunch they had.

“You told her what?!!” Hermione screeches. “Even if she did, you had no right to tell her that. I cannot believe the designs and the company Ginny & I and almost every woman fell in love is hers.” She slouches and takes a gulp of her drink.

“In my defence, she started it first. With her snide comments on my clothes being from Tesco and me thinking success in life is just upgrading from a closet room to a house. Still cannot believe she has started her own company which is very successful.” He says taking a bite of the shepherd pie.

“Now that you think about it, she was at Oxfords during lunch hour, probably would have come from work. I have seen the new store there, its massive and looks very pretty and their company also is some blocks away on the street. But she has changed now, even I can see that. Yes, maybe she said a bit snide comments, but they were in jest and not like in school when they came from bullying.” Ron continues and tells Hermione of the interactions during the lunch.

Harry gazes at the magazine again. He wonders whether the girl he had seen with her has a muggle father, perhaps that would explain her connection to the muggle world. Parkinson was turning out to be an enigma to him. Even though he didn’t want, he kept thinking about her, she left a better impression now than in school days.

He reads a section where she is talking about the environment friendly fabrics she uses.

_“The impact we leave on the environment was something I had never given a thought to. It was never something that we learnt, or we were told to be conscious about. I had attended a lecture as part of my business school-work on the social responsibilities a company should have. In France, they have a mandatory training about how your business impacts your community and the impact it leaves on the environment. I believe every business should have a social responsibility to the community it uses the resources from. When I started Wisteria, I got involved in every process of the company. The source of material, the dyeing of fabrics, the designing, the proper usage of resources, no wastage, proper recycling, etc. I wanted to know where my materials were coming from and if they were being compensated properly, I wanted to check whether the dye I am using in fabrics is not harmful, if the fabrics and the materials I am making use of can be bio-degraded easily and wont cause harm to the environment. Making sure that our planet is good enough for our future generations so they can still live nicely became a huge thing for me and in turn for Wisteria. We realise that children are the future so we invest in them through scholarships, investing in R &D, etc. Giving back to the community should be a conscious effort of evry company and not just a few. You take from community and you need to give back to them then. There..."_

Her rant about the consciousness in shopping makes sense to him now. Climate change is not talked much in Wizarding World as it is being talked in muggle world and he can appreciate that Parkinson is making small steps to do her part.

“Bold isn’t it? She is basically calling out businesses in UK who don’t take part in social responsibility. If you have noticed, apart from Sacred 28 families and their businesses, very few businesses in UK give back to the society even though they use its resources. She had very subtly and cunningly called them out in this article. People will start to notice that all the redevelopment and economy restart has been done by the Sacred 28 over the last 10 years here. Some deserved it as part of their punishments, but many weren’t even part of Voldemort’s circle and were neutrals, which was the whole wizarding world. At the end, the burden of fight fell to little students and teachers and former students and very few people apart from those fought the war. So why does it fall on only those noble and ancient bloodlines to pay their dues when most of the wizarding world was also hiding and not fighting back. Where were the aurors or the former ministry personnel when the battle was going on in Hogwarts? The wards were down but only former students and Order was there, then why are the rest not expected to contribute? And with her social responsibility call, she has subtly called them out; and trust me there are enough people who can read between the lines and will notice that the burden has fallen to few families” Hermione says. She has a look on her face which says that she has been thinking about this for a long time and has now finally verbalised it. He looks at Ron who is looking at his wife and nods in understanding. Harry believes they have had this conversation before. 

Hermione continues, “It makes me respect her a bit, you know. She didn’t had it easy after the war with Prophet basically using her as a scapegoat for all the nasty articles. Also, she left and built her own life and created something which she is proud of. Something tells me she would have stayed away if only her mother wouldn’t have passed away. She had to come back. The cunning way in which she had the public all happy and hyped over Wisteria opening store and shifting bases here, also announcing her fall fashion show before she reveals herself as the owner is applause-worthy. Like it sucked when I first knew this afternoon that she is the founder of Wisteria, but now I can see why she did it and I respect it. She let her designs do the work and took a backseat so as not to do anything that will take the focus away from her creations. But now that people have already fallen in love with her clothes, I don’t think they would mind her being the creator behind the thing they love and want to buy. Sneaky as a Slytherin.” She shrugs her shoulder and goes to snatch some fries from Ron’s plate and starts discussing about the home they just saw.

The topic shifts to the different houses they saw over the last few weeks since they were now house-hunting. They had outgrown their apartment and now were looking for a house with a big yard. From yard, it revolved into vegetable garden, to quidditch fields, to Ginny’s team winning the match and Gwenog training them to the hilt for the quarterfinals, to finally on Oliver Wood’s wedding.

Talking about wedding, Ron and Hermione bicker over the wedding they attended of Ron's relative. 

Thinking about wedding, he thinks about how Parkinson would definitely be there at the wedding this weekend.

Taking a sip of the bourbon he realises that he doesn't mind seeing her again. Looking at the magazine once more he thinks maybe he should buy a decent suit finally.

\-------


	11. Crazy Rich Wedding

Ethereal. That’s what it felt like she had stepped into. There were gold pillars, crystals chandeliers, Pale pink and white flowers hanging down from the ceiling and a white mist all over the floor. There were petals falling from the ceiling, elegant gold flatware sets on the tables, music softly played by some cupids, the whole atmosphere is of serenity and she feels the stress leaving her the more she looks around.

People are dressed in their finest with their jewels on prominent display. Pansy, herself, is wearing a gold sleeveless gown which is filled sequins, beads and a bit of feather for the ruffles and a thigh-high slit on the left side. She has paired it with simple gold stilettos spelled with the cushioning charm so they can be comfortable throughout the day. She hasn’t worn any jewels though, and the makeup is done on a natural side with just red lips on display and her hair open without any elaborate hairstyle. She is going to let her fabulous dress do the talking and doesn’t want to wear any gaudy jewels, “ _less is more, Pansy”_ is her mantra for fashion accessories. She has arrived with Draco who already has a running commentary on who he is going to avoid in this function. She looks around and sees Narcissa and Lucius with the Burkes, Fawleys and some French aristocratic families, sees the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt present too. Well, Daphne was right, this is grand.

After the initial hullabaloo about the news of her being the person behind Wisteria, it all died down in 2 days. The paparazzi were still haunting her stores and her company though, which she resolved with a complicated ward around them. Prophet and Witch Weekly are still writing about her, but that she thinks will never stop. Apart from a small number of people who are cursing her still the majority didn’t care that she is the founder of Wisteria and that surprised her. Maybe it was the Quibbler piece, but many former schoolmates talked about seeing her fight for the good. And then an eye-witness account came from Lavender Brown which said that she fought and took down not only Rodolphous Lestrange, then saw Brown being knocked down by Fenrir Greyback who proceeded to bite her but Parkinson saved her from getting killed by him by duelling and blasting him through the wall. That article, definitely changed the opinion about her for the public. In hours of that article being out, Pansy was flooded with flowers and chocolates and people actually smiled at her on the street. Overwhelmed, she sent a thank you note to Lavender with some chocolates. Apart from Lavender and her, nobody had noticed the Fenrir duel in Hogwarts considering it had taken place in a corridor and not the Great Hall where majority of the battle was contained. It didn’t matter much in the end as Greyback escaped later on not without giving her the most raged-filled look she had ever seen. She didn’t think much at that time as she was more concerned with taking Lavender to the Hospital Wing. Now, though she can look back and see the enraged look Greyback had given her and the contempt-filled look Dolohov had given her when she had duelled him and given him a scar. Great, she thinks, she had managed to make two of the most notorious wizards angry at her and they are both at large now.

Shaking off the nostalgia, she takes her seat at the wedding. The seats are all gold and white and the soft melody fills the room. Daphne walks across and the room and takes the seat beside her. She looks beautiful in emerald green silk gown and her golden locks styled in waves.

“It looks beautiful, Daphne. I think this is the most beautiful venue I have ever seen. All credit to you and your team. And you haven’t even turned into an old hag with all the stress.” She smirks looking at Daphne who is looking radiant and is looking around trying to spot any loose ends.

“Stop it. Enjoy the wedding now. Your team is capable enough to be on their own for the rest of the day.” Draco chides Daphne as he takes the seat next to Pansy. “Honestly, I am surprised that there aren’t actual diamonds on everything.”

“Or unicorns. Remember how obsessed he was that you saw unicorns in the forbidden forest in the 1st year of Hogwarts.” Blaise says sitting next to Daphne. Clad in black velvet suit with gold details, he cuts a suave figure.

The music picks up the pace a little bit and the lights dim. And in complete awe, Pansy sees the white stage they were facing completely transform into a garden filled with white and pink flowers with butterflies flying around and a pond in the middle which has white and pink lotuses and lilies on it and there are fireflies in the flowers and trees lighting up. It is truly magical and she is sure that her mouth is open but the hushed excited whispers throughout the room makes her believe she isn’t alone.

A bridge woven of pink and white lilies is currently being built when Oliver Wood walks across the room. All those muscles built during his keeping days in Quidditch make him look like the Roman Gods she had seen during her travels, Pansy thinks. He is dressed in a white suit with diamonds on the cape and a light blue shirt underneath. There is an embroidery done in silver threads with diamonds and crystals on the cape. While he walks toward the garden, Cassius entered the room literally walking on a water stream. He looked brilliant, utterly and absolutely the most handsome she had ever seen him. He is dressed same as Wood but he has a pale green shirt underneath and has diamonds, rubies and emeralds on his cape threaded with gold thread.

Both of them walk toward each other and meet on the flower bridge atop the pond which is now completed.

“George Weasley helped me with the garden” Daphne whispers so only the 4 of them can hear. “Remember, the swamp they made at school at our 5th year; well I remembered that after our lunch with them last week. We were already planning to go ahead with the garden, but we were going to charm it or transfigure it. Even though it looked good, it still didn’t look like this good. So, I visited him at his shop and talked to him about the possibility if he can make a portable fairy garden life-like. He worked with us throughout the week and only just delivered the thing yesterday. We were already thinking of going with our other option of transfiguring when he came in with the portable garden and took all our breathe away. Swear, Cassius literally cried when rehearsing last night.” Daphne says looking at it proudly.

“Brilliant!” Draco whispers. They all remember the swamp at school being part of the Inquisitorial Squad. The whole thing had real toads too. Pansy agrees, this is totally amazing.

After the beautiful ceremony, the chairs were magicked away and the room was open for bar and dancing. She sees Antoinne, her previous boss and walks towards her happy to catch up on events. Their little group in short time into a large gathering with different designers and models swapping notes on fashion gossip around the world. It feels good to talk freely about fashion and designs without any façade.

Seeing red hair on her vision peripheral, she turns and sees it is indeed a Weasley, George Weasley walking towards the garden. She excuses herself from her group and walks towards the portable garden where many people still wandered over to admire it.

“If you would have added a unicorn standing on the grass, I feel Cassius would have married you on the spot.” She says to George Weasley who turns at her voice and smiles widely.

“Good, since I don’t think I would have filled up the suit and the cape as Oliver did!” He smiles and replies.

She touches the flower petals and marvels at the magic and how real they feel.

“It will hold for a day. It was developed on short-notice thus could make them last only a day, maybe with a lot more tweaking will develop some portable garden which can last a lot longer. A new product line for WWW, huh?”

“You are under-playing yourself. This is fabulous work of magic and you should definitely look into patenting this work of art.” She doesn’t shy away from appreciating his work and compliments him. His cheeks turning a bit red also helps!

“He totally should.” Daphne joins them. She has now loosened a bit and is enjoying the festivities instead of worrying about them. “You have no idea how many people have come and asked me about this work of art. This is utterly genius; you should market it and also develop various kinds.”

“Do I need to save my brother from two Slytherins?” Ginny Weasley walks into the conversation. She looks beautiful in pale pink silk gown, which Pansy notices is Wisteria design. Raising an eyebrow at her dress to her she replies, “Not even close. We are giving compliments to your brother on his fantastic work.”

Ginny catches her raised eye on the dress and shrugs her shoulder and replies, “I agree. Any work of art should be appreciated.” She gestures to the dress and raises her glass of champagne.

The conversation turned to the maroon dress of Wisteria she worn in Ireland some weeks back and with her appreciating Wisteria. These two Weasleys were easy to talk and joke around with and after Ginny caught on Pansy and Daphne’s game of complimenting George as his cheeks and now ears too turned red due to them, she joined in the fun too.

Having a surprisingly fun conversation with both the Weasleys, it gets interrupted by Andre Guisseppe, who is head of Italian Council of Fashion who asks her for a dance.

Which turns into many dances with many other people. Dancing for many hours, she goes to the bar for a drink exhausted. She can’t remember when the last time is she had this much fun interacting with people.

Gripping her glass of champagne, she leans on the pillar next to her and relaxes. She looks on the people milling around the room when she notices someone coming and standing next to her. A woodsy musk scent mixed with the scent of lilies assaults her senses. Potter, she doesn’t know how she realised that it is Potter based on his scent, but she does. She might need to analyse this later, she thinks.

“So, I bought a suit and I have to agree it brings a bit of satisfaction knowing that the suit I am wearing is organic in nature, will bio-degrade easily and every sale donates 10% to feed the poor. Plus it is not really that expensive.” He says. She is a bit amused by it and nods her head along.

“Also, I believe I need to apologise for my behaviour in the café. Even if you weren’t a designer and really just living off your parents, it was not my place to judge. So, I am sorry.”

At this she turns her head to look at him. And she is so thankful that she had completed her sip before turning because she definitely would have choked.

Standing before her is Harry Potter, who for once has tamed his hair. His hair is gelled back and with his scar barely visible as it has faded, people who don’t know him, won’t recognise him. He is dressed in a suit which looks made for him. It is royal blue in colour and fits him like a glove. With his beard trimmed, hair gelled back and a suit that fit him so beautifully, he looks amazing. Noticing his smirk, she realises she has been staring at him a bit longer than normal.

“Apology accepted.”

“Just like that?! What no comeback?”

“Potter, I am tired. So be happy that your apology is accepted”

“Tired of all the dancing.”

“So you have been watching me?” She quips at him and watches him falter.

Harry doesn’t know what to say when she questions him of watching her. It was hard not to. Dressed in gold with feathers and beads and a thigh high slit, she looks like a goddess. Even Charlie whistled when he saw her. He had watched her talking with Ginny and George along with Greengrass and had moved to join them when she was whisked away for a dance. One dance which turned into many as he saw her being danced all around the dance floor. Why he always kept her in his peripheral, he doesn’t know; but he knew where she was throughout the night. She has captured his attention with her not falling for his chosen one or saviour of the world persona and not treating him like a celebrity. She keeps him on his toes with her remarks and sparring with her always leaves him refreshed. He realizes that there is no point in him being in denial that he likes her.

Watching her walking to the bar, he takes the opportunity and walks towards her.

“It was hard not to notice the blinding gold on the floor. Have you emptied the galleons from the bank to make the dress? Do the goblins know of the heist?”

“That was lame, Potter. I have faith in you to make a better joke than that.” She quips back looking utterly unimpressed.

Its these things which makes her likeable. He doesn’t have to put a persona in front of her. He can be himself without a care whether he is conducting himself nicely and being “the Harry Potter” people expects him to be. With her, he knows there is no expectation and he can be himself.

They stand shoulder to shoulder in comfortable silence and go back to drinking and people-watching. The music was fast-paced now and a couple of quidditch players were on the dance floor showing off their drunken dance moves and laughing at the hilarity. The lighting was a bit dimmed now and the ceiling was now converted to glass to look at the starry night, which were out in aplenty in the sky with the venue location being on a non-polluted zone.

“So, muggle clothing?”

“They are comfortable”, she shrugs. He sees her shaking her head to a French wizard who was coming to ask her for the fast-tempo dance.

“You mean the purple monstrosity you wore on my first visit to your house weren’t comfortable?”, he replies now turning his body to the side to watch her.

She laughs at the memory of her wearing the purple robes with crystals on them.

“I will have you know that those robes were made of the smoothest velvets and my mother had a corset stitched inside it too. I had to stand still for hours in the silhouette, poked with needles for measurement and the designer so exclusive that she only did appointments and had only one day for sewing that robe. My mother would come back from the grave just to finish the dark lord’s work Potter if she hears you talk like this about her favourite designer and her creation”, she is still smiling. That wide smile that he hasn’t ever seen on her or even associated with her.

He thinks she looks breath-taking in that moment, smiling, radiating happiness and a little buzz drunk. Her eyes crinkle at the ends a bit and she is still stuck in some memory of past as she is shaking her head.

She turns to him, still smiling, “I will have you know that I pulled that style off. You didn’t even realise that I was not able to breathe with the corset, but hey, I still managed to duel those wards.”

“You mean how you sprawled across the floor after your shield was hit with the curse?”

“Atleast I was sprawled across the floor in an elegant way, you on the other hand….”, she teases back and goes back to watching people dancing, especially the French wizard who she had denied the dance a few minutes back.

“He looks like he wants you on the dance floor. He keeps glancing here every few seconds”, he says to her.

She shakes at head and smirks, “Who? Felipe? No, we already had our dance. Plus he is not glancing here for me, Potter. He is checking you out, I am not his type.”

Harry turns to see Felipe, the French wizard and sure enough he is glancing at him.

“Must be the suit. If he knew what you looked normally, he would mistake you for a bum with that messy hairstyle of yours”, she continues.

“Pansy Parkinson, have you been watching me?!!!!”, he throws her words back at her and sees her still for a second and then raise her glass as a gesture of salute and take a sip.

There is an announcement for the last dance of the night. The lights dim more, and a slow song starts. He sees almost everyone go for the dance floor with a partner.

He turns to Pansy (she has become Pansy now in his mind and not Parkinson, he needs to analyse this information later tonight in the safety of his home) and extends his hand to her in invitation.

She looks surprised a first, eyes wide and lips forming a perfect ‘O’. She looks at his hand and then at him.

“Potter, the Patil twins groaned on about your dancing skills during our 4th year that they made every girl’s ears bleed. I am not sure I can handle bruise toes with you stamping on them throughout the dance. In case you haven’t heard I have a very important week ahead for me”, she says teasingly but she has magicked her glass back to the bar counter.

“You don’t have to worry. I have spelled my shoes to be weightless so you won’t feel a thing.” He closes his hand around her palm when she rests it on his extended hand and walks towards the dance floor.

He takes her hand and they start to sway to the rhythm. He thinks it is perfect, her hand fits his perfectly and they are at a height difference it is perfect they neither of them has to look up too much or look down, so no neck sprain.

Being this close to her, he notices that her eyes are not dark brown but honey in colour and she smells of vanilla and roses.

“Are they giving dance classes at the DMLE or were the Patil twins exaggerating?” she says.

“In their defence, I was horrible. And no, not DMLE, but I did attend a 2 day dance classes. Hermione was adamant on it that Ron and I learn to dance before their wedding as she didn’t want her first dance between Ron & her as husband and wife to be full of being on each other’s toes the entire time. So you have her to thank to”, he replies to her and smiles and twirls her around as proof.

“Show off!” though he notices there is no heat or mirth in that. Her smile has softened and it had softened her whole face with it.

They dance on, enjoying each other’s company with quips here and there. He sees Hermione give him a raised eyebrow when they pass her and she sees them dancing together, maybe it has to do that he looks and feels happy and light and carefree and Pansy does too. He will hear about it later from ‘Mione, but now he can enjoy the dance.

The music is at its end and now they are just swaying together. With the last note slowing dying out, an awkwardness fills between them. Still holding each other’s hands, they smile at each other.

“Well, I would have to find and tell the Patil twins that you have definitely improved, so they can dance with you now”, she says quirking her lips upwards on one side.

He laughs. They still are holding each other’s hands. He thinks maybe he should ask her for lunch or maybe…

Whatever he was thinking is abrupted when a huge light zooms between them. Instinctly, he takes his wand out. Which he realised was an extreme reaction, and not really needed.

It’s a firework. The unicorn firework is chasing what looks like a firework in the shape of a quidditch player seated on a broom. It zooms across the whole room and goes up the ceiling which is now open and blows up into the sky in the form of the most colourful firework he has seen.

“A unicorn! Ofcourse he has somehow incorporated the unicorn in his wedding”, Pansy says amusedly still looking up the sky where the firework show is still on. The firework show casts her face in lights and he thinks that in that moment she is the most beautiful person he has ever seen.

Holding her hand gently in his, he looks up and enjoys the beautiful fireworks.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of Harry - Pansy interaction and definitely the chapter where Harry's feeling changed for her and he realises that.  
> I hope you enjoy this chapter.
> 
> \-- Prixie


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